Authors: Julie Doherty
Chapter 41
Magi had been taken from Lancaster County and forced to watch as savages tied his father to a post, impaled him with pine splinters, then lit him on fire. He could not remember much else about that day, only that his mother had been angry with him for wandering off alone to gather nuts. He’d been at the table with his punishment arranged before him, a cross and a Bible, while his mother fussed over something in a pot.
The features of her face were lost to him, but he remembered her hair. It had been auburn, glossy, and quite long, and it remained so for a long while in her murderer’s belt. Time faded it to the color of deerskin, but it crossed Magi’s path at eye level for several winters before losing any of its length. Eventually, a black scalp replaced it, and his mother was no more.
His parents, Mathias and Anna Hetrick, had named him Michael, which the Indians mispronounced as “Magi.” His sister, called Ethel, had been taken with him to replace children lost by a Seneca woman, the sister of an important sachem. The woman was not unkind to them unless she caught them whispering to each other in English, which meant they received frequent beatings.
The severity of Seneca life was too much for Ethel, who failed to survive her first winter with their captors. She froze to death one night while trying to escape, leaving Magi alone in the world.
During his second spring in captivity, Magi’s Seneca mother died. His adoptive father, never fond of his white son, grew resentful and harsh.
Magi, sickly and of slight frame, was useless to him. Neglected and left to fend for himself as well as he could, he became no better than a dog in his village, a practice target for would-be warriors.
The following spring, he traveled with the entire village to the pigeon nesting grounds near the Niagara River, carrying more than his body weight in supplies upon his back.
The white traders, knowing the Iroquois gathered there to harvest the vast flocks, brought their wares—and their firewater—and left with pelts and coin. It was here, in a drunken passion, that Magi’s adoptive father sold him to a French trader who must have pitied the bruised boy.
Magi never learned the truth of the Frenchman’s motives, for as they trekked southeast, Shawnees attacked and killed his rescuer. They bound Magi’s hands together, sat him on the Frenchman’s panicked horse, and draped a belt of wampum around his neck. He outlived the frothing beast under him, which, with its three companions, they slaughtered and roasted before sunset.
He expected to share the horses’ unhappy fate, but to his surprise, Magi found only mercy among the Shawnee. Big Turtle, his new adoptive father, had no love for the French. He saw Magi’s capture as a great victory and raised him lovingly among his five natural sons.
The Shawnee not only tolerated Magi’s native language, but encouraged it. As a result, many of them became fluent in English, something Big Turtle saw as a great advantage.
Magi’s malnourished frame healed and stretched into a man’s, and life remained pleasant until smallpox raged through their village and claimed three of his brothers. Only Yellow Hawk and Black Snake survived the scourge. They took wives and lived in peace until Yellow Hawk’s death.
“But you know of Yellow Hawk’s death.” Magi prodded the embers while Henry and Father listened at the table.
Father nodded. “I hope ye know we had naught to do wi’ it.”
“I do.” Magi had been with them for three days. “Black Snake told us.”
“Who killed him?” Henry asked.
“I will tell you how Yellow Hawk died and you may decide who is to blame.”
He pinched the superior linen covering his broad chest. “You see this shirt? Two summers ago, a man sent by the French father gave me four shirts, some better than this one. In the fall, he returned with gorgets and tomahawks for the warriors and kettles for the women. The next spring, an English trader replaced the French one. Soon, many more English traders brought us gifts. They told us that the English father would soon make war with the French father, thinking us too stupid to know this for ourselves. They told us that a council was to be held. They invited every sachem, including Big Turtle, whom they hoped would join them, since there would be more gifts and food for all who attended.
“Like Kishacoquillas, Big Turtle never hated the English, and he no longer hated the French, since a Frenchman gave him his white son. He decided to go to the meeting, but when the day for going came, aching bones forced him to send my brothers in his place. They took with them wampum belts showing Big Turtle living in peace between his French and English fathers.
“For three days, sachems wearing fancy hats and coats gave long speeches about their friendships with the English father. They promised to make war against the French, whose gifts were not as good as those given by the English.
Yellow Hawk’s turn to speak arrived late on the third night. He rose before hundreds of men at the council fire and delivered an unexpected and unwelcome message—that grateful as Big Turtle was for the many gifts from his English father, he would fight for no one.
“This angered the English, who tossed our wampum belts into the mud at Yellow Hawk’s feet. Furious, too, were the warriors of the
Mengwe
, those men you call Iroquois or Six Nations. They reminded my brothers that they allow us to live in peace here when so many Shawanese have been sent west.
“The English father’s man raged until his face was red like his coat. He reminded my brothers that the
Mengwe
were good friends with the English father. He sent my brothers away with a message of his own, that if Big Turtle refused to support his English father, then he should pack up his village and join the
Lenape
king, Shingas, and the rest of the Shawanese, along the Allegheny River. The English father would give no gifts to those who did not help him fight the French, even Big Turtle, nephew of Chief Kishacoquillas, good friend to the English.”
Henry thought back to their journey from Philadelphia, when the smoke of many fires darkened the sky at the mouth of the Juniata River. They’d seen Indians in the canoes, Indians at the beaver flats, and Indians atop Turkey Ridge. Their numbers made sense now.
“When we found your brothers, were they coming home from this meeting?” he asked.
Magi nodded. “They stopped off near Mahoning Ridge to visit a friend named Elias White. They did not know Shingas sent warriors to attack White so the English would blame the
Mengwe
and turn against them. My brothers escaped by swimming across the river, but they suffered serious wounds.”
Henry recalled Elias White’s lipless face, his mouth locked in an eternal scream. “We happened upon White’s the day afore we found your brothers.”
“Yellow Hawk fell at the beaver flats. Black Snake thought he would die next. He put his legs in the creek, desiring to feel the waters connecting him to his home and family. The rest you know.”
It was a lot to take in. Henry saw now that Ulstermen were not alone in their exposure to tyranny. The natives of this land suffered it, too, maybe more so. Big Turtle and his clan were being forced out of neutrality, and their choices were less than ideal. They could stay and fight alongside the British and Iroquois, those overseers who treated them like dogs, or go west and join the rest of the Shawnee, a people now foreign to them. How did one make such a choice?
Father murmured something about corrupt governments and the dying fire. He retrieved some firewood, which he dropped onto the floor at Magi’s feet.
Magi placed a stick on top of the coals and continued his story.
“After Yellow Hawk’s death, Black Snake followed you, although you believed him gone. He saw what happened on the ridge, when the
Lenape
had you down. He was about to help you, but this one”—he nodded at Henry—“used his medicine to call the wolves, and the wolves saved you.
“Black Snake told Big Turtle of this medicine. He said you went to McConnell’s cabin. Big Turtle sent me to watch you, to learn more about your wolf medicine. I saw you making things, watched you break open the field, and I smelled your ox’s dung. Pictures from my youth began to stalk my dreams at night and haunt me by day. Sadness weighed me down. Soon I longed for something I could not name.
“When I told Big Turtle of my troubles, he said he made a mistake that would take away the fifth of his six sons. He said I would want the world I came from, and I cannot say he was wrong.” He scanned the cabin’s unsophisticated furnishings. “I am at peace here, and the feeling that I have returned home warms my bones to their centers. Yet I am torn in two like an old shirt, as my heart is Shawanese, and Big Turtle still has the love of his white son.”
“Must ye choose one way of life o’er the other?” Henry pulled threads from his ruined shirt and wound them around a stick.
Magi nodded. “Big Turtle is taking our people to the Ohio country. Shawanese fires will burn here no more. And yet, I cannot go with him, for I not only watched you. I watched someone else, at the farm on the other side of the ridge, where the man makes firewater. Someone there makes my desire to stay among my own kind even greater.”
Father grinned. “Clara.”
“What is a Clara?” Magi asked.
“That’s her name,” Henry said. “Her name is Clara.”
“Clara.” Magi’s expression brightened for a fleeting moment. “She makes me feel funny.” He shifted in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Is the boy hers?”
“Not by choice.”
“He’s a fine buck. I worry for them.”
Henry shared a knowing look with his father, whose grin stretched wider.
Big Turtle would go to the Ohio country, but Magi wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter 42
Winter pressed upon the land and buried the shrubs in snow. Ice silenced the creek. A hush descended upon the cabin, broken only by the agony of the trees, which cracked like gunshots on still nights.
They were hemmed in, the option of tucking tail and fleeing to civilization removed by the first enduring snowfall. In a stroke of good luck, Magi decided to stay, bringing with him survival experience and no small array of firearms. He did so at great risk, his adoptive father having angered the Iroquois by going west to join the French. It was Henry’s torc, Magi believed, that would assure the cabin residents’ safety. Warriors would mention Henry’s medicine at every fire from the Susquehanna to the Niagara. No tribe would test its power. No one wanted to anger the wolves.
Winter stretched into spring, and when the ice on the creek broke loose and flowed away in slabs, the birds returned in gyrating clouds. The snow melted, revealing wheat seedlings that had not only survived the winter, but thrived.
The days turned warm and fertile, then sweltering and laborious, but by mid-summer, their first crop was harvested, threshed, winnowed, and bagged.
With indigo buntings twittering in the canopy above them, Henry and Magi hoisted the last sack of grain onto the cart built to haul their yield to Harris’s. Constructed of poplar, it was no wider than the ox’s horns from tip to tip, with pivoting shafts to facilitate turning. Where the beast went, the cart would follow, and thanks to the torc and Magi’s mastery of two native languages, they could use the expedient trails unavailable to them last year. Even so, they were in for a long, arduous journey.
Father threw a tarp over the load, “Ye’re in for a scutching if I hear ye took any chances. If the cart breaks, just leave it and make a couple trips. Damn your eyes, mule, move!”
He pushed an emaciated mule out of his way, an animal Magi found during a mid-winter hunt. They had no way of knowing who it belonged to, or whether its owner even lived. The evidence of a traumatic past lay in its mental instability and two wide scars on its side. It accepted weight on its back, but if led three strides from the ox, it turned into a bucking, kicking cyclone.
The ox, unaware of the mule’s lofty opinion of him, stood dutifully between the shafts while Father tied the senseless animal to the cart.
“I ought to slay this eejit where he stands.”
Magi shot an anxious glance at Henry, who grinned. He knew Magi intended to sell the mule and buy Clara a gown.
Father checked and re-checked the staves, then patted the ox’s shoulder, now thick with ropey muscle. “If ye see any wear on the ox, stop and fix the problem. I’d rather ye’d come hame wi’ an ox and no cart than the other way around.”
He smacked Henry’s rump. “Buy yoursel’ some decent breeks. These’ll be lucky to make the trip back wi’ ye.”
Henry looked down at his breeches. They felt constrictive, a deerskin breechclout and leggings being his preferred attire now. Shorter and still flapping at the knees, the breeches that emigrated with him were held together by many patches. He wore them at his father’s insistence, that man fearing someone would mistake his son for an Indian and shoot him.
Magi could not be persuaded to borrow Father’s breeches for the trip, saying he’d rather take a musket ball to the chest than press another man’s shit stains against his backside.
“Now mind”—Father pointed at Henry’s face—“when ye get to Harris’s, see about taking oot a notice concerning Mary.”
Henry nearly laughed. During the weeks of threshing, when his back ached and his hands blistered, he thought of nothing else. Time sharpened his longing for her, and as the wheat stalks perished, Henry’s patience died with them. He cursed the windless days that prevented winnowing and rejoiced when a pitying breeze accommodated him. It took him only two days to winnow and bag up their entire crop.
“I should come along,” his father said for the fifth time. “It does nae feel right to send ye off by yoursel’.”
Henry cinched a rope Magi flung across their load. “We talked about this, Father. Ye said ye wanted to rake and heap the straw, mayhap girdle some trees.”
“Aye, I know, I know.” Father’s eyes betrayed his conflict.
“I’ll be worried, too. I’ve got Magi. Ye’ll be here all alone.”
“Not so.” Father pointed to the musket leaning against the cabin, a gift from Big Turtle. “I have Lizzie and her wee lead cousins for company.”
“Be watchful just the same. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
They left before noon and followed the creek downstream on an easy route through an array of wildflowers. At an ancient oak tree, the creek bent sharply and flowed through a barren plain pounded flat by generations of Shawnee feet. Only a few scorch marks and a scattering of bones and broken arrowheads remained of Big Turtle’s village. Stalwart weeds already flourished in holes and crevices. Before long, the forest would reclaim the land and cover all evidence that the Shawnee once lived, loved, and laughed here.
Henry sought his companion’s eyes, but Magi locked them on the hemlock forest at the far side of the desolate plain.
They reached Lemuel Tanner’s by nightfall and presented him with a turkey Magi shot along the way.
“You have my thanks, sir.” Lemuel took the bird by its legs and handed it to Clara. “We heard the shot. Got us worked up for a while. Had a party of Mingos pass by a fortnight ago and thought they were coming back.”
Lemuel had thankfully sacrificed some seed bags to clothe his family. The bags were unnecessary for their original purpose at present, his bumper crop having moldered in the barn. Lush corn in tassel grew again in his fields, but he had nothing to haul to market. Regardless, he seemed grateful for the meat, glad of company, and full of plans.
“Take this.” He handed Henry some coins. “Big Turtle gave me that for a jug of the good stuff before he left. Bring me a bag of flaxseed if ye can, and salt, if there’s any to be had and it ain’t too dear.” He leaned closer. “And a ribbon for Clara. I can’t make good on my promise to get her a gown yet, but still, she deserves something nice.”
Winter had been generous to Clara. She was taller, her ivory face decorated with freckles that danced across her nose and cheeks. She wore her fiery hair in a braid as thick as her wrist. Henry detected no hint of her former roughness. She acted like a perfect lady.
Magi accepted a corncake she offered without meeting her eyes. Instead, he smiled at her son, caught staring at his mutilated earlobes.
The child ran behind his mother.
“Forgive my boy,” Clara said. “I reckon he don’t know what to make of you.”
Their eyes met in a lingering gaze that caused Magi’s cheeks to redden.
“So you’re Magi,” Lemuel said. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”
“We have not.”
Lemuel gestured to Magi’s untouched corncake. “Eat it afore it gets cold.”
Magi took a bite and chewed, looking everywhere in the room except at Clara.
Clara was less awkward. She studied Magi’s physique, and unless Henry was mistaken, she admired what she saw.
He teased his friend about it a few days later, as they pushed the cart over rubble at the base of Buffalo Mountain.
“Clara could nae keep her eyes off ye.”
“You lie.”
Henry laughed. “I saw her. Remember how Lemuel looked at the turkey roasting on the spit? Well that’s how she looked at ye. Ye have a chance wi’ her.”
“Shut up and push.”
They forded the Juniata and found Duncan’s landing the following morning.
Although time stripped nothing from that man’s memory, it did much to degrade his crookedness.
“Well, if it isn’t the windblown seed of Somerled himself,” he said to Henry, as his ferry glided toward them. His smile vanished when he noticed Magi, whose hair had not yet grown long enough to conceal his scalp lock. “And who’s the hairy Injun ye got wi’ ye?”
“His name is Magi.”
“So is ye white or Injun?” Duncan asked.
“Both,” Magi replied.
Duncan grunted and took a seat while Magi and Henry unyoked the ox. “Be as white as ye can. There’s been a bounty on Injun scalps since January, thanks to Governor Morris. Not many folk cashing in on it, but ye’d best be careful.” He looked at Henry. “Not sure if ye’ve heard, but we’re officially at war wi’ the French.” He assumed a French accent. “They have
le Général Marquis de Montcalm
.” He lit his pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “And who does His Majesty send us? The bloody Earl of Loudon.”
Henry never heard of the Earl of Loudon, but he guessed by Duncan’s outrage that the ferryman thought little of the nobleman. He feigned interest as Duncan blathered about current events and the fall of a fort named Oswego, only becoming genuinely attentive when Duncan shared the news that the political upheaval sent grain prices soaring.
“Nearly all the flour’s going to the Injuns and outlying forts,” Duncan said.
The wheat in their cart was worth double what Henry expected, which was good, since getting it across the Susquehanna River required two trips—and double the fare—on Duncan’s ferry.
Once their load and the animals were safely across the river, only two ridges stood between them and a plump coin bag. It took two days to crest both, two full days of zigzagging and heaving and pulling the cart over steep and stony ground.
By the time the ironclad wheels rolled onto the last mountain’s level crest, the ox’s front legs were bloody up to its cannons, and everyone—man and beast—needed a break.
They rested for two days before descending the south side of Blue Mountain. This proved more challenging than the ascent, and they had to use blocks and tackle to hold back the cart and load, but by nightfall on the ninth day of their journey, they reached Harris’s outpost.
Henry’s hope of purchasing supplies vanished when he saw Harris’s empty sheds.
A single mule lazed near the water trough. Its owner sat alone at the firepit where Henry warmed his bones last fall.
Henry approached the fire.
“Good day, sir. I’m Robert McAdams.”
The man responded with a quick nod. “Robert Walsh.”
Henry scanned the riverbank, where Harris’s ferry lay idle.
“This place was crowded last time I was here.”
“Should have seen it a fortnight ago. Could barely move for the battalions.”
“Where are all the traders?”
“Some joined the militia. Some are interpreting. Others are out west or up north delivering gifts to the Injuns. Not much trade in these parts, what with Fort Granville burned and the settlers gone to the towns. Only profit left is in pelts. Wrong time of year for those, though the summer deerskins will soon be ready.” He glared at Magi’s ears. “You
Mengwe
?”
Magi narrowed his eyes and offered no reply.
“I was hoping to find a trader named William Robinson.” Henry wanted to repay that man for the moccasins.
Walsh picked up a twig and used it to dislodge something stuck between his teeth. “If you see him, you’d better drop to your knees and start praying. Seneca killed him this winter past.”
The shock of this news—and the calloused manner in which Walsh delivered it—nearly kicked Henry’s legs out from under him. Times were dangerous indeed if experienced men like William Robinson were losing their lives.
He thought of his father, isolated at the cabin.
“
I have Lizzie and her wee lead cousins for company
.” It was funny at the time.
It wasn’t funny now.