The Black Rifle (Perry County Frontier series) Page 2

  The boy’s stick whacked solidly against Heart-Eater’s shin and, dancing on one leg, the Shawnee struck the boy to the ground before turning to drag his iron knife in the small circle that loosened the woman’s thick blond scalp. With a powerful heave that moved the dead woman across the ground, he jerked the scalp free.

  Toquisson heard the older man chuckle an instant before the boy’s stick slashed across his shoulders wounding his dignity, and in sudden rage, he swept the child’s stick aside and dragged the boy to him.

  A thin, quavering scream struck Jack Elan a moment before he reached the clearing. Its terror froze his mind, and as though it had been lurking and waiting the sound, a sick despair boiled from a hidden corner of his heart.

  Elan lurched into his stumbling run, aware of his clumsy shoes thrashing and slipping on the forest floor, and his shocked senses watching as great trees moved slowly aside and the clearing came into view.

  Horror met his eyes and sliced forever through his soul. Beloved Ellie crumpled before their cabin with a dark figure crouched above her registered on his stunned senses. In the first instant he could not comprehend how her golden braids could be in the hand of a giant Indian swinging something in a huge arc around his body. A tiny wail focused his shocked attention, and he recognized the boy hurtling through the air held to the Indian by a single ankle. Before its meaning could reach his mind, the boy’s head met the oak chopping block and burst like an over-ripe melon.

  With the child’s shattering skull, an instantaneous rending savaged the mind of Jack Elan and, unaware that his own agonized scream jerked eyes to him, he raised the clumsy musket at full run and drove its charge of turkey shot at the horror in the clearing. As powder smoke roiled around him, a massive and unseen blow drove darkness through Elan’s brain and plunged him into oblivion.

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  As Heart-Eater had directed, the young warrior circled the clearing and crouched in hiding along its border. He had watched dispassionately the death and scalping of the white squaw and experienced a moment’s admiration for the child’s attack on Heart-Eater. So caught was his attention that he was unaware of the white man’s presence until he plunged into the clearing and raised a gun to fire at his companions.

  Even as he hurled his stone-tipped club, the young warrior knew it was too late. The gun fired an instant before the heavy stone struck the side of the white’s head, and echoes of the shot bounded and rebounded from surrounding hills.

  The young Shawnee leaped to recover his club, and without thought of snatching the musket or taking his first scalp, he sprinted to his companions. Sudden panic sprouted among the hunters. Many whites could be about and, unaccustomed to gunfire, the Shawnee could not know that a single shot would go unremarked.

  Toquisson, the Heart-Eater, had thrust the blond braids through his belt and was urging the older companion into the shelter of the forest. Moving slowly, as if dazed, the old Indian appeared mesmerized by a small puncture near the center of his chest. He coughed wetly, a touch of blood showing at a corner of his mouth. At Heart-Eater’s insistence, they broke into a trot, senses alert and tuned to the forest around them.

  The rest of the party waited anxiously where the cabin path joined the main trail. They had heard the gunshot and wished to be away, but Toquisson allowed a pause, and they drew up letting the old warrior cough blood from his lungs. Only ill fortune had let a ball penetrate the old warrior’s chest. A second pellet had lodged shallowly in the Eater’s thigh, and he popped it free with a flick of his blade, but the sting of his wound added to his dissatisfaction with the outcome of the raid.

  Despite the Eater’s display of the sun-colored scalp, no envy or admiration showed within the hunting party. Few saw honor in the scalp of a woman, and it was plain that the old one was badly wounded. It seemed a poor trade to the hunters who had sought only animals. The Eater turned sullenly from his unappreciative companions.

  The party listened to the forest for danger sounds and heard none but, bathed in sweat, the old hunter slumped to the earth. Frothy blood stained his narrow chest, and his mouth hung slack. As they crouched near, his breath caught and his body sagged as its spirit fled.

  If Toquisson, the Heart-Eater, sorrowed for his dead companion, he concealed his grief. He stood aside as they moved the body of the old warrior from the trail and scooped a hollow in the bosom of the earth mother. The burial was swift with only a small pouch of corn buried at the hunter’s head to feed him on his new and final journey.

  They paused, marking the burial place in their minds so that it could be told in the hunter’s village, and others coming this way would know it.

  They were ready to move when the pound of running on the cabin path reached them. Ears placed to the ground told that the runner was alone, and they slipped into ambush along the trail.

  Chapter 2

  Vengeance

  He thought the rhythmic tapping inside his head brought him awake, and he lay for a time listening to it. His mind drifted, comparing the sounds to the ticking of a tall clock or a musician’s metronome, but they did not seem quite right. The rhythm was more that of a small drum, and he tried to visualize it tapping away inside his head.

  Later, he decided the rhythm had not wakened him at all; it was what he had to do that brought him awake. He worked to his feet, accepting an agony within his head, and finding that he could make it less by listening closely to his own private drum. The discovery seemed clever, and he found himself chuckling aloud, but he stifled the laughter as not right for his task.

  Before he killed the Indians he supposed he should bury the people. They lay close by, and it seemed they should mean something special, but his mind lurched from thinking, and he let meaning grow distant. He knew that evil waited in the darkness of his mind, and when it crept closer he again forced it away.

  He scratched a hollow in the plowed part of the clearing and dragged the woman into it. He paused to control his dizziness and became aware of a strange keening cry that monotonously repeated itself. Listening closely, he found the cry was from his own throat, and he made it stop lest the Indians hear.

  When he placed the child’s body in the same hole he had to again quiet himself, and for a fear-filled instant he thought he might discover why he screamed aloud, but he covered the grave without knowing, letting the pulse of pain and rhythmic tapping swell around him.

  He picked up the musket from where it had fallen and moved to the edge of the clearing. He found the path and started along it. The Indians would be there, for everything, even the deer, moved on forest paths.

  His feet joined the drum’s rhythm, and he could set his mind to seeing the Indians. They were all alike. They loomed large with thick chests and thighs. Their hands were huge, and although he could not see their features, he would know them when it was time.

  Running increased the thunder of agony within his skull and drove the pictures away. He sank into the pounding cadence of trotting, and let it fold around him.

  His mind was far away when the savages leaped from ambush. Snatching the musket from his hand they pinned him helplessly against the trunk of a tree. The drumming rose, and he heard again the keening cry knowing that it was his own. He felt the hands holding him tighten and saw strangeness come into the eyes that gazed upon him.

  While a pair of hunters held the white man helpless against the bole of a tree, others examined their captive with interest and not without awe. The strike of the young hunter’s club was plain, and the swollen and distorted skull had blood-soaked the hunting shirt that hung open to the white’s waist.

  There was excited discussion when the white’s musket was discovered to be unloaded, and they found the blank and empty-eyed stare of the captive more alarming than the expected hatred or fear.

  A hunter made the sign of madness at his temple, and others recognized that spirits had entered the head of the white man and taken away his mind. There was immediate disagreement, for killing one taken by spirits was n
ot a small thing. Some knew the dangers of spirits finding a new lodging with the life-taker. Snorting his contempt, the Heart-Eater shouldered to the front and faced the white with drawn knife.

  Toquisson placed his knifepoint against the pallid skin of the captive’s breast and pressed until blood trickled. He stood spraddle-legged before the white, moving his knifepoint against the captive’s breastbone, waiting for the pain of the wound to reach his victim’s mind.

  The change in the captive was violent. Hatred fanned by fires of madness glittered in his eyes and a high-pitched shriek of agony drove the hunters backward half a step. The Eater was quickest to recover, and his throaty growl of disdain shamed them for their fear.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the captive’s keening cry ceased. They saw wildness recede, and in its place unrelenting hatred flared.

  Heart-Eater grunted his satisfaction and drew the knife slowly in a shallow arc that laid open the pale skin to a point below the left breast. Blood wept, and the hunters knew that in his killing lust the Eater would again tear free and devour the heart of an enemy.

  The sting of the knife grew into a sharper pain as it grated on the living bone of his chest and touched hidden recesses of his mind. With instant clarity, Jack Elan knew again who he was and what had gone before.

  The internal drum ceased without flourish, and although the agony in his head vied for attention with the pain in his chest, Elan knew his situation and recognized the enemy holding the knife. His mind shied from the scene in the clearing, but he knew he had come to kill this Indian and that nothing, including his own life, mattered in comparison.

  Liquid fire seemed to touch his soul as the knife sliced the skin and flesh of his breast. Pain seared across his ribs, and he felt the sweat of agony bursting from his straining body.

  The captive’s concentrated hatred sealed his lips against outcry, and his courage forced muttered “waughs” of respect from the Shawnee hunters. Heart-Eater appeared unaffected and moved his knife to his hip in preparation for a finishing stroke.

  Inspiration, perhaps born of desperation, told Jack Elan his move, and he acted without hesitation. His eyes rolled in his head, his muscles laxed, and his body sagged against the tree trunk. Instinctively, the Shawnee tightened their grips holding him upright. Then, his muscles straining in ultimate contraction, screaming aloud in effort, Elan drove the hard sole of his heavy shoe upward with every iota of force he could muster—into the exposed crotch of the massive knife wielder.

  Surprise was absolute, and Elan felt even his protected toes buckle painfully under the terrible smash of his heavy-soled shoe into the loins of his enemy. Through a seeming eternity he felt his foot driving into the tissues of the Indian who appeared involuntarily raised onto his toes by the crushing impact of the blow.

  For an extended moment the massive Heart-Eater poised, Elan’s foot trapped by spasmodic reaction between his thighs. The glaring eyes and ready knife seemed waiting to strike. Then, breath whistling from tortured lungs became an agonized croak, and Jack Elan watched the Shawnee’s eyes roll white in their sockets and saw the great muscles turn to water and collapse the Indian dead or unconscious on the ground before him.

  Awe-struck and disbelieving, the hunters not holding the captive clustered about the fallen Heart-Eater. They turned him, not overly gently, and loosened his bloodying breechclout. Sucked-in breaths and hands sympathetically gripping their own loins clearly described the ruin they gazed upon.

  A Shawnee turned and struck savagely at their captive, and like indignant children, other hunters joined in beating him with their fists and unstrung bows and lashing his trapped body with whippy arrow shafts. Unable to protect himself, the captive writhed against his tree, silently suffering the rain of blows.

  Shawnee anger dribbled away, and ignoring the savaged Heart-Eater who lay as if dead, they stripped the clothing from the battered prisoner and tied him securely with rawhide about the elbows and fastened his thumbs together behind his back with an eel skin tie. His feet were knocked from under him, and he lay motionless, locked deep within himself as they thonged his feet to a sturdy sapling. Only then did the Shawnee turn to their fallen comrade. One brought water from a rivulet and doused the Eater’s slack features. Another prodded his ribs with his toe, and a soft moan escaped the Eater’s slack lips.

  Lying naked in his own welter of blood and dirt, sounds of life from his enemy fed the fires that burned in Elan’s mind. His own hurts were lessened by his need to again reach his enemy. He tested his bonds, but finding them unyielding he withdrew deeper into his mind, shutting away bodily pain and carefully walling off the thoughts and pictures that rose out of darkness to catch him unaware. Upon occasion, a vision of the clearing came too close, and his keening cry turned the Indians to him, and their silencing blows rained heavily on his unresisting body.

  The hunters had traveled far in a vain search for new hunting grounds, and the lodges waited their return. Heart-Eater became a problem to the party. He did not die, yet his damaged body would not heal.

  During lucid moments, the Eater demanded they care well for the white prisoner, as he intended vengeance such as they had never seen. The Eater’s hatred for the white captive gave strength to his own fight for life, and the two lay beyond reach of each other, their mutual hatred an almost visible force arcing between them.

  The Eater could not be carried as even slight movement brought a sweat of agony to his body. The hunters placed him deep in the hemlocks, leaving the young warrior to provide for him until he could travel or until he died.

  The white prisoner was laden with the hunters’ belongings and goaded into moving along the forest path. He traveled naked in the October chill. With his hands bound behind his back he was unable to save himself from falls, and each time he was beaten erect and into motion. Feet bared to the soil split and bled. Toenails ripped, and exposed ankles and calves wore a thousand tears from thorns and brush. At each ford a cord was tied to his neck lest he fall and drift away, and without hands he scrabbled for leavings the hunters flung toward him.

  Still, he survived, and grunting hog-like to snatch a drink at a crossing or groaning with endless throbbing pain within his head, he struggled westward along the great traveling path ever deeper into the Endless Hills and ever further from even the smallest hope of encountering other whites who might come to his rescue.

  On occasion other Indians appeared on the path. Some were families moving to winter lodges, but most were of other tribes, and the prickly Shawnee greeted them coldly and camped apart at their own fires. Travelers looked upon the wreckage of the white prisoner, and in some eyes he saw compassion. In others there was hatred that matched his own, but most observers showed only detached curiosity for he was not their concern.

  When strange hunters appeared, Elan fought himself from the darkness where he lived alone with the pulsing beat in his head to see if they were the Indians he was to kill. As they were not, he sank again into the depths to wait, to endure until they came.

  Despite the cold and neglect, Elan’s wounds began to heal. Swelling receded from his head, and he could again see with both eyes. Heart-Eater’s long cut scabbed over and healed from the inside. His body shed weight and appeared corded with rope-like sinew. Unkempt hair hung about Elan’s face. A scraggly beard lengthened, and its pulling provided amusement for his captors.

  Repeated beatings with bow flats bruised and tormented him but did not kill or maim. His bonds were adjusted often enough to maintain circulation in his hands, and even his bared feet began to toughen and bled less often.

  Their route led behind Conococheague Mountain and down the narrow Horse Valley. They headed west along Path Valley and began a tortuous crossing of the Allegheny Mountains into the Ohio country.

  Daylight marches passed and blurred in his memory. There was a wide river—or perhaps there were two rivers—crossed on thrown together rafts, and mountain valleys and unnamed ridges crowded together in the confusions of
his mind.

  The nights were worse for he was tightly bound, and the cold of coming winter sank into his bones. It was during the dark of night that memories slipped from hiding and rushed into his consciousness. Elan stifled the screams that rose before the bow staves of annoyed hunters fell upon him, and he hid with increasing cleverness within the rhythm tapping remorselessly inside his skull.

  The group entered the village before Elan was aware of it. In retrospect, he should have supposed they were close as many Indians known to his captors were encountered, and he was often forced from his darkness to look for the Indians he was to kill.

  The hunters had decorated themselves with paint from small clay pots carried in their hunting pouches, and they had smeared him with mud, things that had not before happened. But he had stayed deep in his mind, and the grouped longhouses and separate lodges, the cries of many people, and the bright sunlight of a large clearing brought him sudden confusion.

  Indian women hurried to screech and pelt him with sticks and offal, and children dashed close to hurl their smaller objects at him. He looked past them with studied concentration searching for the tall, thick Indians he was to kill. Finding none, he had already returned within himself before he was thrust, still naked and bound, into a small bark lodge.

  Animal-like, he slunk to the darkest corner and crouched and waited.

  Chapter 3

  Blue Mocassin

  A quiet voice speaking words he recognized crept into Elan’s consciousness. He tried letting the words slip past, but they intruded, and with sudden and startling clarity he understood their meaning.

  As though peering into light after long darkness, Elan struggled to focus his eyes on the speaker. His vision blurred and cleared to see a youthful Indian squatting on his heels beside him. Elan’s mind labored to accept the English words spoken with bell-like clarity, and his effort forced the internal drumming into a hidden corner where its rhythm softened like the ticking of a distant clock. Elan recognized the Indian’s English as more perfect than his own, and it so caught his interest that it showed in his eyes.