Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (13 page)

           
Then young
warrior,” and he touched Mark’s arm, “then you others.
You, Stoke, walk
last. Look back when you walk. Watch for those other bad hearts following.”

 
          
“Don’t
fear, you may count on me,” said Stoke.

 
          
They
resumed their walk toward the sound of occasional firing, louder now. Tsukala
kept his forward position, half a dozen paces ahead of Mark. He seemed to flit
from tree to tree, and Mark, trying to imitate Tsukala’s stealthy advance,
congratulated himself that his own progress was cautious and quiet. Behind Mark
came Celia, and she, too, was making little or no noise.

 
          
They
finally approached the area of forest which Mark knew from long hunting
experience to be near the river across from the Jarrett homestead. The sun was
sliding to westward, the afternoon was waning. Tsukala brought them close to
the water, and stopped them where they could see out.

 
          
“Ahi,
your home has not been hurt,” he
whispered to Mark. “If they had put fire to it, we would see smoke.”

 
          
“I
rejoice that we see none,” returned Mark thankfully.

 
          
“Maybe
danger here,” amplified Tsukala. “We go across the river now, one at a time. Here,
the water is not deep. Everybody come close and hear me.”

           
They gathered around Mark and him,
Stoke very stern and grim, Schneider bluff and expectant, Celia pale but
steady.

 
          
“Hold
your guns, ready to shoot,” said Tsukala. “I go across first of all.”

 
          
“Nay,
Tsukala, let me go first,” said Mark. “If anybody is over there watching for
us, he will shoot. You had better be here, to direct the fight if needed.”

 
          
“Brave
heart,” Tsukala praised him. He stood up behind a pine tree and half-drew the
arrow on his bowstring. “Then you go,” he granted.
“Ready,
you others.
When young warrior goes over there, he will stop behind that
big tree, the one you call an oak. He will make ready to fight. When he is
across, I go next. Then you, Stoke. After that, you,” and he nodded at
Schneider. “Then the girl with sun hair.”

 
          
“Be
careful, Mark,” besought Celia in a low voice.

 
          
"Ahi,
young warrior, do what the
sun-haired girl tells you,” Tsukala lectured Mark. “Quick now, go.”

 
          
Mark
waited no longer, but moved quickly into the open, to the river, and went
sprinting across the shallows. He headed for the oak and knelt behind its broad
roots, rifle rested against its bark to the right to command the leafage
beyond.

 
          
Hurried
splashing,
and Tsukala was there, too, dropping to a
crouch behind bushes. Then Stoke joined them. Schneider came across the
water,
and Celia last of all.

 
          
“Spread
out,” Tsukala ordered, extending his arms left and right. “You men, each side
of me—move apart, twice the height of a man. You, sun-haired girl, keep behind
us.”

 
          
They
formed the skirmish line. Mark was at the left, then Tsukala, then Schneider,
with Stoke at the far right. Celia brought up the rear.

 
          
“Move,”
said Tsukala.

 
          
They
stole gingerly along through thickets and clumps, keeping their formation. They
came to the edge of Mrs. Jarrett’s garden patch. Beyond it, they could see the
corn cribs, the shed that was a stable for the horses and the cow. The Jarrett
cabin stood like a brown block among trees beyond the smaller sheds.

 
          
“Young
warrior,” said Tsukala under his breath. “I crawl now, toward your house. You
come, too. You others, follow behind, but stay away from us till the right
time.”

 
          
A
shot sounded, seemingly from close at hand. Another replied to it. That must be
at the tavern. Tsukala cast himself flat and went creeping among the trees like
a great brown mink. Mark handed the extra rifle to Stoke and threw himself
down, too. He inched his way along on elbows and knees, keeping his body as
close to the ground as he could manage.

           
And still they went unchallenged.
Mark and Tsukala approached the very edge of the Jarrett yard. Beyond, the
brush was cleared and only a few shade trees were left to grow.

 
          
Tsukala
jerked his head in a gesture to beckon Mark close to him. Side by side they
crawled to where a tree had fallen and a great bristle of leafy shoots had
sprung up from its half-rooted stump. Tsukala lay low and peered carefully
through these. Mark squirmed under a spreading laurel to where he, too, could
see into the yard.

 
          
He
was looking straight toward the front of his house, at perhaps twenty yards’
distance. Two Indians were in sight there, both with guns. One stood and stared
intently in the direction of the tavern beyond more trees. The other squatted
on the sill of the open door, and he had one of his mother’s quilts, a
patchwork of green and white squares, caught around him like a loose robe. He
gnawed at a piece of meat stuck to the point of his knife. Plainly these
outlaws had been plundering the house.

 
          
Even
as Mark’s blood grew hot at that realization, a third Indian came running into
view toward the house. He gestured and pointed, as though calling them to the
tavern. The Indian on the door log
rose,
leaned in and
grunted something. A comrade came out. In his hand he carried a jar, and Mark
recognized it as the sort in which his mother and Celia had put their preserved
berries.

 
          
All
four Indians started away across the yard.

 
          
A
sharp buzz in the air, and Tsukala’s arrow leaped into the open. The man with
the quilt around him sprang high,
then
went down. He
struggled on the ground, and the fabric flapped like the wings of a green and
white beetle.

 
          
Mark
sprang to his feet, aimed, and sent a bullet at the one who carried the jar of
preserves, then yelled like an Indian himself to see the thief go down.

 
          
Almost
at once, a volley burst around him. Stoke was firing. So were Schneider and
Celia. A third Indian fell, and the fourth dashed away like a scared rabbit.

 
          
The
Blow from the Ridge

           
“QUICK!”
CRIED
Tsukala to them.
“Hurry, before that man tells his friends!”

 
          
He
was off, even as he spoke, running swiftly in pursuit of the survivor. Mark
paused only to gesture at Celia with his rifle.

 
          
“They’ve
all gone from the house,” he shouted at her. “Stay here, Celia. Go inside and
fasten the door shut—stay out of harm’s way.”

 
          
Schneider
and Stoke were running in the direction Tsukala had taken. Mark also started
running, caught up with the two older men and in half a dozen paces ran past
them with all his strength and speed.

 
          
The
party came to the edge of the road. On the far side rose rocky heights, shaggy
with trees beginning to show the colors of fall, and at the highest point
rose
the great rounded knob that gave this place the name of
Bear Paw Gap. The tavern was in view from where Tsukala halted them, plain to
see within its bristly stockade of poles. As Tsukala flung out both arms to
call his companions close to him within cover, they saw puffs of smoke from the
steep rocks across the road from the inn, heard the sound of exploding powder.

 
          
“Some
of them are high up there,” said Tsukala quickly. “They can shoot down at the
house from where they are. We must go after them and chase them down. Come.”

 
          
“How about the one who got away in our yard?”
Mark asked.

 
          
“No,
he will not cross the
road,
he would be shot by your
friends. He cannot go and tell those up there. Come, I say.”

 
          
Tsukala
bent double as he sneaked behind concealing trees westward again. Mark followed
him, and could hear the others coming behind them. Tsukala came to a place
where two great trees grew on opposite sides of the road, their branches almost
meeting above.

 
          
“Here,”
he said, “these leaves will keep them from seeing us from where they are, high
up. Cross where I do.”

 
          
He
fairly darted across to the far side. Mark sprang the width of the road a
moment
later,
and looked back to see Stoke and
Schneider make the crossing in turn, with, close behind them, the swift,
slender form of Celia, still carrying her rifle.

 
          
“I
said for you to stay safe at our house,” Mark scolded her.

           
“Nay, Mark, I feel safer when I am
with you.”

 
          
Mark
had no time to say more to her, for Tsukala was climbing up the ridge, hoisting
his body from rock to rock among gnarled roots and tangled growth. Mark made
haste to climb after him, and so did the others.

 
          
It
was a steep scramble there on the slope of the ridge called Jarrett’s Ridge,
and the way was impeded by trees, logs, boulders, clutters of brush; but all
the more reason to feel that the climb was not being watched or even suspected.
Mark had no sense of weariness as he reached the summit beside Tsukala, but
both Stoke and Schneider puffed a little with their efforts. Mark slid down a
few steps and gave Celia his hand and helped her up.

 
          
“You
shouldn’t have come,” Mark admonished her again.

 
          
“Do
not say that, young warrior,” Tsukala said. “Girl with sun hair is brave. She
has the heart of a warrior. Let her come with us.”

 
          
“What
is our task now?” Stoke inquired of Tsukala.

 
          
Shots
crackled again, from the direction of the fighting. Tsukala glanced up at the
sun, and so did Mark. It had descended well down the western sky, to a point
where it lacked perhaps an hour and a half of sunset.

 
          
“We
go here above them,” Tsukala issued his orders. “I go
first,
and young warrior behind me.
Then you others.
Look for
what I do.
This,”
and he swept his arm in a beckoning
gesture, “you come on. And this,” he held his hand behind him, palm
spread,
“you stop and wait. You hear me?”

 
          
“Aye,”
said Stoke.

 
          
“Ja”
said Schneider.

 
          
“I
understand,” said Celia.

 
          
Tsukala
picked his way among the scattered rocks on the ridge, ever peering through
trees and foliage ahead. Mark kept second position, his rifle poised.

 
          
It
seemed a very short while until Tsukala, coming to a breast high rock, halted
suddenly and lifted his head to look above it. He made the beckoning gesture,
very deliberately. Mark came close beside him at the big rock. Stoke joined
them, and Schneider. Celia cautiously drew up behind the group.

 
          
From
there they could see down ridge, through a light fringe of leafy branches that
would conceal their own heads lifting above the natural breastworks. Mark saw
at once that they had come close to the upward thrust of the Bear Paw knob, and
that below them, down a rough, steep descent of
rocks,
the tavern lay at the side of the road. Its surrounding palisade was plain to
see, with trees in bunches and belts all around. No sign of life moved there on
the lower ground of the gap. Those within the tavern held their shelter, those
without held their cover.

           
Tsukala’s fingers snapped in the
hunter’s signal to call attention, and he stretched his hand toward a point on
the downward slope, perhaps forty yards at a slant beneath them. Half hidden in
a tangle of scrub lurked a human shape, watching toward the tavern below. Mark
saw a brown, naked back, a shock of sooty hair.

 
          
Schneider
slid the barrel of his musket forward above the rock, but Tsukala’s hand
quickly struck it up. Tsukala thrust his scowling face toward Schneider and
shook his head violently. His left hand, holding his bow with the arrow across
it, made a sweeping gesture. He pointed here and there with the arrow. His
right hand held up two fingers, then three, then four. Tsukala meant that there
were others near by, and that they might be hiding there in any numbers.

 
          
“Hold
your fire,” said Mark as softly as he could, with his mouth close to
Schneider’s ear, and Schneider subsided. All were silent, motionless, straining
their eyes to see.

 
          
At
another point, more to the left and somewhat farther down the slanting height
than the point where the first man lay, bushes jiggled. Mark crept along past
the rock where his friends were grouped, reached a twisted tree that clutched
with its roots at a stony slant. He flung himself at its base to get a clearer
look beneath the branches. Those bushes were a thick tangle, but Mark thought
he could make out a faint outline among them. It looked gray, like sooty ashes,
not brown like the skin of an Indian warrior. His mind flew back to the scrap
of homespun he had torn from the garment of the lurker at the mill—was that
only the night before last, or an eternity ago? And that lurker had been a
white man; Quill Moxley, surely Quill Moxley. The white leader of the Indian
attackers was there below Mark.

 
          
But
Tsukala had commanded them all to wait and hold their fire. Plainly Tsukala
wanted to learn, if he could, what force held this vantage position on the
slope above the tavern. Mark looked at the bushes again, to impress upon his
mind the exact location where they grew. Then he slid back to the others, and
nudged Tsukala. He put his hand to his cheek to make the sign for red, and
touched his hunting shirt to signify a coat. Redcoat—a Britisher, a white
enemy—that was the best he could do to give his information without speaking.
He pointed to the bushes below. Tsukala nodded his comprehension.

 
          
All
of them studied the space below. After a time, Stoke snapped his fingers and
pointed toward the right. An evergreen had fallen there, its green needles
cloaking a ledge of rock. Mark narrowed his eyes to look and saw no movement or
other indication of life there. But Stoke held his fingers spread upward in
front of his brow, as though to pantomime a bonnet of feathers. Tsukala looked,
too, nodded and tightened his lips as though to denote he understood.

 
          
Mark
looked from one to the other, frowned and twiddled his hand on his wrist in the
query sign. Tsukala stooped to the foot of the rock, where a tuft of grass grew
in a crevice. He touched the grass, then touched his hair, and pointed down
toward the fallen tree.

 
          
Mark
made a second study of the prone branches. Now he could make out a paler patch
of green among them, and suddenly he knew what it was. An Indian sheltered
there, and he had bound handfuls of grass around his head to hide it.

 
          
Farther
below around the tavern, whoops drifted up. The Indians there were shouting to
hearten each other, or perhaps as some sort of signal. It must have been the latter,
he decided, for gunfire burst out again at various quarters on the slope just
below Mark and his friends. Mark saw gray puffs of powder smoke, one from where
he thought Moxley
hid,
another from the man half in
view below, another from the grass-headed one among the evergreen boughs. And
three other puffs rose at various points —no, four puffs, because one sprang up
almost immediately below the rock, within a score of places near where they
waited.

 
          
Tsukala
swung his head to fix each of the group in turn. His pointing hand darted. He
indicated Schneider, then the man Schneider had wanted to shoot. Stoke he
gestured to give attention to the one huddled among the branches of the fallen
evergreen. He pointed to Mark, and from Mark he pointed to Mox- ley’s hiding.
Celia came to rest her rifle on the jagged top of the stone and Tsukala touched
the barrel of the rifle and pointed to where a puff of smoke was dissolving in
the air. He drew his arrow to its barbed head, and aimed it for yet another point.

 
          
“Yell!”
he commanded suddenly, and raised his voice in a shrill, prolonged Cherokee war
cry.

 
          
“Hi!”
yelped Stoke, and “Hi!” Mark echoed him.

 
          
“Hourra!”
bellowed Schneider.

 
          
Tsukala
sped his arrow toward the place he had chosen. Mark fired at where he thought
Moxley’s gray shirt had shown, and the others fired in almost the same second
with him.

 
          
Again
they yelled, all of them together, and Mark turned to reach for the extra rifle
he had given Stoke, but Stoke had dropped his own gun to fire with the second.
Bram Schneider, too, had drawn a horse pistol, and it went off with a great
crash of sound.

 
          
Men
were jumping from their hiding places on the slope below, to run in terror.

 
          
Schneider
hoisted himself, scrambled over the breast-high rock, and seemed to dive down
as into a deep pool of water. Mark heard a half-strangled cry as Schneider
threw himself heavily upon the man below them, and there was a crashing,
struggling sound of furious wrestling. But the other Indians almost tumbled
down the slope to get away from that attack, so sudden and incomprehensible
from above them. Tsukala was ducking around the rock in pursuit, and as he went
he snatched another shaft from his quiver.

 
          
“After
theml” thundered Stoke.
“Charge!”

 
          
Mark
was already on his way down. He slipped and scuffed on the rocks. He put
another charge into his rifle as he went, and he wondered, as though with a far
edge of his mind, how often he had fired bullets that day. He almost fell, but
saved himself by clutching at the bough of a hickory. He heard shouts and yells
somewhere below, and the voices were ones he recognized—the voices of his
friends. They sounded exultant, victorious.