Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (29 page)

11

It wasn’t an hour after Measure left. Ta-Kumsaw stood atop a dune, the White boy Alvin beside him. And in front of him, Tenskwa-Tawa. Lolla-Wossiky. His brother, the boy who once cried for the death of bees. A prophet, supposedly. Speaking the will of the land, supposedly. Speaking words of cowardice, surrender, defeat, destruction.

“This is the oath of the land at peace,” said the Prophet. “To take none of the White man’s weapons, none of the White man’s tools, none of the White man’s clothing, none of the White man’s food, none of the White man’s drink, and none of the White man’s promises. Above all, never to take a life that doesn’t offer itself to die.”

The Reds who heard him had heard it all before, as had Ta-Kumsaw. Most of those who had come to Mizogan with them had already refused the Prophet’s covenant of weakness. They took a different oath, the oath of the land’s anger, the oath that Ta-Kumsaw offered them. Every White must live under Red man’s law, or leave the land, or die. A White man’s weapons can be used, but only to defend Reds against murder and theft. No Red man will torture or kill a prisoner—man, woman, or child. Above all, the death of no Red will go unavenged.

Ta-Kumsaw knew that if all the Reds of America took his oath, they could still defeat the White man. Whites had only made such inroads because the Reds could never
unite under one leader. The Whites could always ally themselves with a tribe or two, who would lead them through the trackless forest and help them find their enemy. If Reds had not turned renegade—like the unspeakable Irrakwa, the half-White Cherriky—then the White man could not have survived here in the land. They would have been swallowed up, lost, as had happened to every other group that came from the old world.

When the Prophet finished his challenge, there were only a handful who took his oath, who would go back with him. He seemed sad, Ta-Kumsaw thought. Weighed down. He turned his back on the ones who remained—on the warriors, who would fight the White man.

“Those men are yours,” said the Prophet. “I wish there weren’t so many.”

“Mine, yes, but I wish there weren’t so few.”

“Oh, you’ll find allies enough. Chok-Taw, Cree-Ek, Chicky-Saw, the vicious Semmy-Noll of the Oky-Fenoky. Enough to raise the greatest army of Reds ever seen in this land, all thirsting for White man’s blood.”

“Stand at my side in that battle,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“You’ll lose your cause by killing,” said the Prophet. “I’ll win my cause.”

“By dying.”

“If the land calls for my death, I’ll answer.”

“And all your people with you.”

The Prophet shook his head. “I’ve seen what I’ve seen. The people of my oath are as much a part of the land as the bear or the buffalo, the squirrel or the beaver, the turkey or the pheasant or the grouse. All those animals have stood still to take your arrow, haven’t they? Or stretched out their neck for your knife. Or lain down their head for your tommy-hawk.”

“They’re animals, meant to be meat.”

“They’re alive, meant to live until they die, and when they die, die so that others can live.”

“Not me. Not
my
people. We won’t stretch out our neck for the White man’s knife.”

The Prophet took Ta-Kumsaw by the shoulders, tears streaming down his face. He pressed his cheek against Ta-Kumsaw’s cheek, putting his tears on his brother’s face.

“Come find me across the Mizzipy, when all this is done,” said the Prophet.

“I’ll never let the land be divided,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “The east doesn’t belong to the White man.”

“The east will die,” said the Prophet. “Follow me west, where the White man will never go.”

Ta-Kumsaw said nothing.

The White boy Alvin touched the Prophet’s hand. “Tenskwa-Tawa, does that mean I can never go west?”

The Prophet laughed. “Why do you think I’m sending you with Ta-Kumsaw? If anyone can turn a White boy Red, Ta-Kumsaw can.”

“I don’t want him,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“Take him or die,” said the Prophet.

Then the Prophet walked down the slope of the dune, to the dozen men who waited for him, their palms dripping blood to seal the covenant. They walked off along the shore of the lake, to where their families waited. Tomorrow they’d be back in Prophetstown. Ripe to be slaughtered.

Ta-Kumsaw waited until the Prophet had disappeared behind a dune. Then he cried out to the hundreds who remained. “When will the White man have peace?”

“When he leaves!” they shouted. “When he dies!”

Ta-Kumsaw laughed and held out his arms. He felt their love and trust like the heat of the sun on a winter’s day. Lesser men had felt that heat before, but it had oppressed them, because they weren’t worthy of the trust they had been given. Not Ta-Kumsaw. He had measured himself, and he knew that there was no task ahead of him that he couldn’t accomplish. Only treachery could keep him from victory. And Ta-Kumsaw was very good at knowing a man’s heart. Knowing if he could be trusted. Knowing if he was a liar. Hadn’t he known Governor Harrison from the beginning? A man like that couldn’t hide from him.

They left only minutes later. A few dozen men led the women and children to the new place where their wandering village would settle. They stayed no more than three days in any place—a permanent village like Prophetstown was an invitation to a massacre. The only thing that kept
the Prophet safe was sheer numbers. Ten thousand Reds lived there now, more than had ever lived in any one place before. And it
was
a miraculous place, Ta-Kumsaw knew it. The maize grew up six ears to the stalk, thicker and milkier than any corn had ever been before. Buffalo and deer wandered into the city from a hundred miles around, walked to the cooking fires, and lay down waiting for the knife. When the geese flew overhead, a few from every flock would come to land on the Wobbish and the Tippy-Canoe, waiting for the arrow. The fish swam up from the Hio to leap into the nets of Prophetstown.

All that would mean nothing, if the White man ever brought his cannons to fire grapeshot and shrapnel through the fragile wigwams and lodges of the Red city. The searing metal would cut through the delicate walls—that deadly driven rain would not be held out by sticks and mud. Every Red man in Prophetstown would regret his oath on that day.

Ta-Kumsaw led them through the forest. The White boy ran directly behind him. Ta-Kumsaw deliberately set a killing pace, twice as fast as they had run before, bringing the boy and his brother to Mizogan. They had two hundred miles to Fort Detroit, and Ta-Kumsaw was determined to cover that distance in a single day. No White man could do it—no White man’s horse, either. A mile every five minutes, on and on, the wind whipping through the topknot of his hair. It would kill a man to run so fast for half an hour, except that the Red man called on the strength of the land to help him. The ground pushed back against his feet, adding to his strength. The bushes parted, making paths; space appeared where there was no space; Ta-Kumsaw raced across streams and rivers so quickly that his feet did not touch the bottom of the stream, merely sank just deep enough to find purchase on the water itself. His hunger to arrive at Fort Detroit was so strong that the land answered by feeding him, giving him strength. And not just Ta-Kumsaw, but every man behind him, every Red man who knew the feel of the land within him, he found the same strength as his leader, stepped in the same path, footfall by footfall, like one great soul walking a long slender highway through the wood.

I will have to carry the White boy, thought Ta-Kumsaw. But the footsteps behind him—for Whites made noise when they ran—kept up, falling into a rhythm identical with his own.

That, of course, was not possible. The boy’s legs were too short, he had to take more strides to cover the same ground. Yet each step of Ta-Kumsaw’s was matched so closely that he heard the sound of the White boy’s feet as if they were his own.

Minute after minute, mile after mile, hour after hour, the boy kept on.

The sun set behind them, over the left shoulder. The stars came out, but no moon, and the night was dark under the trees. Still they didn’t slow, found their way easily through the wood, because it wasn’t their own eyes or their own mind finding the way, it was the land itself drawing them through the safe places in the darkness. Several times in the night, Ta-Kumsaw noticed that the boy was no longer making noise. He called out in Shaw-Nee to the man who ran behind the White boy Alvin, and always the man answered, “He runs.”

The moon came up, casting patches of dim light onto the forest floor. They overtook a storm—the ground grew moist under their feet, then wet; they ran through showers, heavy rain, showers again, and then the land was dry. They never slackened their pace. The sky in the east turned grey, then pink, then blue, and the sun leapt upward. The day was warming and the sun already three hands above the horizon when they saw the smoke of cookfires, then the slack fleur-de-lis flag, and finally the cross of the cathedral. Only then did they slow down. Only then did they break the perfect unison of their step, loose the grip of the land in their minds, and come to rest in a meadow so near the town that they could hear the organ playing in the cathedral.

Ta-Kumsaw stopped, and the boy stopped behind him. How had Alvin, a White boy, traveled like a Red man through the night? Ta-Kumsaw knelt before the boy. Though Alvin’s eyes were open, he seemed not to see anything. “Alvin,” said Ta-Kumsaw, speaking English. The boy didn’t answer. “Alvin, are you asleep?”

Several warriors gathered around. They were all somewhat quiet and spent from the journey. Not exhausted, because the land replenished them along the way. Their quiet was more from awe at having been so closely tied to the land; such a journey was known to be a holy thing, a gift from the land to its noblest children. Many a Red had set out on such a journey and been turned away, forced to stop and sleep and rest and eat, stopped by darkness or bad weather, because his need for the journey wasn’t great enough, or his journey was contrary to what the land itself needed. Ta-Kumsaw, though, had never been refused; they all knew it. This was much of the reason Ta-Kumsaw was held in as high esteem as his brother. The Prophet did miraculous things, but no one saw his visions; he could only tell about them. What Ta-Kumsaw did, though, his warriors did with him, felt with him.

Now, though, they were as puzzled by the White boy as Ta-Kumsaw was. Had Ta-Kumsaw sustained the boy by his own power? Or had the land, unbelievably, reached out and supported a White child for his own sake?

“Is he White like his skin, or Red in his heart?” asked one. He spoke Shaw-Nee, and not in the quick way, but rather in the slow and holy language of the shamans.

To Ta-Kumsaw’s surprise, Alvin responded to his words, looking at the man who spoke instead of staring straight ahead. “White,” murmured Alvin. He spoke English.

“Does he speak our language?” asked a man.

Alvin appeared confused by the question. “Ta-Kumsaw,” he said. He looked up to see the angle of the sun. “It’s morning. Was I asleep?”

“Not asleep,” said Ta-Kumsaw in Shaw-Nee. Now the boy appeared not to understand at all. “Not asleep,” Ta-Kumsaw repeated in English.

“I feel like I was asleep,” he said. “Only I’m standing up.”

“You don’t feel tired? You don’t want to rest?”

“Tired? Why would I be tired?”

Ta-Kumsaw didn’t want to explain. If the boy didn’t know what he had done, then it was a gift of the land. Or perhaps there was something to what the Prophet had said
about him. That Ta-Kumsaw should teach him to be Red. If he could match grown Shaw-Nee, step for step, in such a run as that, perhaps this boy of all Whites could learn to feel the land.

Ta-Kumsaw stood and spoke to the others. “I’m going into the city, with only four others.”

“And the boy,” said one. Others repeated his words. They all knew the Prophet’s promise to Ta-Kumsaw, that as long as the boy was with him he wouldn’t die. Even if he were tempted to leave the boy behind, they’d never let him do it.

“And the boy,” Ta-Kumsaw agreed.

Detroit was not a fort like the pathetic wooden stockades of the Americans. It was made of stone, like the cathedral, with huge cannon pointing outward toward the river that connected Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair with Lake Canada, and smaller cannon aimed inland, ready to fend off attackers on land.