Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

Duncan bent with one of the nails and drew shapes in the soil, the five geometric shapes from Burke's killing tree. "Do you recognize these?"

His companion shrugged. "Secret signs. A code."

"Jesuits and spies use codes," Duncan asserted.

"Often," Rideaux agreed. "But Jesuits use alphabet codes, keyed to a Bible passage. This is altogether different."

"It is not an Indian thing."

"Of course not. It is European. Secret societies use them. The Freemasons. The guilds."

"Where in America are Freemasons?"

Rideaux shrugged again. "New York. Philadelphia. Virginia."

The shelter to which Rideaux and Moses led Duncan was a drafty lean-to fastened to the log storehouse behind the store they had visited earlier. They were a stone's throw from the landing dock where boats bound for the settlement upriver at Wyoming boarded, and as Moses explored the shadows inside, Duncan watched a flatboat slowly wind its way upstream. In two days a fast canoe in that direction could reach Edentown, where Sarah Ramsey and her company of Scottish workers were building a new life.

When he emerged a minute later Moses was herding a muscular Indian who was using a lacrosse racquet as a makeshift crutch. The young stranger spat curses at the older Indian, clutching a small clay ale pot tightly to his chest as he staggered toward a bench along the wall. He lowered the crutch and fingered a tattered shoulder pouch decorated with lewd figures, pushing it behind him as he sat. Moses motioned for Rideaux and Duncan to approach.

"This sinner at first claimed he never heard of Ohio George," Moses declared in a disapproving voice as the young Indian slopped more ale down his throat. "I told him he could then have no claim on the possessions of the dead man he had stuffed under his pallet, that we would gladly take them for the use of the church."

"He is an Ohio Indian as well?" Duncan asked.

"Red Hand is Shawnee, from west of the Susquehanna," Moses said. "I have known this one since he was a boy. His parents died of fever, and we brought him to the mission to live with us, but he always fled into the forest. He consorts with a band of renegades, most of them orphans who ran away from missionaries, ready to work for anyone who will buy them rum." He shook the drunken Shawnee. "Did you kill Ohio George?" he demanded.

Red Hand offered a drunken laugh. "He had no family," he said with a sneer. "No one to complain."

The words, as good as a confession, startled Duncan at first. Then he realized that Red Hand was saying that in the tribal world there was no need to account for the killing, for there was no one to be held responsible to.

Moses stared at the Shawnee with a cold fury. The Christian Indians took a very different view of murder.

Duncan stepped into the lean-to, quickly surveying the tattered furs that hung on the walls, the bundles of cedar boughs used as pallets, the stringless bows and battered lacrosse sticks in one corner. Picking up a pack decorated with a faded pattern of concentric circles that was half-covered by a pallet, he took a step toward the door then paused. Kicking aside the boughs, he exposed a much smaller, crudely made case of heavy buckskin bearing a similar pattern of circles.

He carried both outside and dropped them in front of the drunken Shawnee. As he upended the contents of the pack on the ground the Indian began a low, whispered chant. The words, unintelligible to Duncan, lit a fire in Moses' eyes. He snapped a command at Red Hand, who ignored him. Then to Duncan's astonishment, the Christian Indian slapped the man, so hard it cracked open his lip.

"He is without honor, this Shawnee!" Moses spat.

"I don't understand." Duncan scanned the faces of his companions for an explanation.

"He is invoking vengeful gods," Rideaux explained, as Red Hand laughed at Moses, then touched his bleeding lip. His eyes flashed with defiance as he drew lines on his cheek with his own blood.

"It is a sacred thing to invoke those spirits," Moses said in a simmering voice. "Not for one who would kill his own mother for his next jug."

"What will you do, Chris-tian?" the Shawnee taunted Moses, drawing out the last syllables. "Your master forbids you striking another man. Run now, and beg forgiveness. Your white god makes you a woman!" he mocked.

As he spoke Rideaux appeared from inside the lean-to, carrying a rifle. "This is too rich a gun for the likes of these," he said. "It was hidden under the boughs along the wall."

Red Hand's face clouded as Rideaux handed the gun to Duncan. It was a finely worked piece, with an elaborate carving of the owner's initials on the stock. WB. He thrust the stock into Red Hand's face. "Did you kill him? Did you kill Winston Burke?"

Red Hand silently drained his pot of ale. Duncan studied the gun as Moses took it and leaned it against the wall. It meant one or both of the renegades had come from the Forbes Road, had probably been following them, and had no doubt warned Waller. It meant that Samuel Felton had lied to Duncan.

Duncan kept a wary eye on the man on the bench as he sorted the possessions of Ohio George. A pair of tattered moccasins. A lacrosse ball, its hair stuffing hanging out a deep gash in one side. A broken bullet mold. A small oval-shaped piece of wood with several threads attached to it. A glass ball, perhaps an inch in diameter. A bundle of leather straps. Six more of the long nails with the crosshatched heads. A twist of tobacco. He lifted the tobacco and smelled it. It was neither the leaf cultivated by the tribes nor the cheap plug tobacco traded in sutlers' stores, but an expensive leaf, the kind Winston Burke might have brought from his home in Virginia.

As Duncan contemplated the meager possessions of the dead man, Moses probed them, then peered into the empty pouch. He saw the query on Duncan's face. "Our missionaries have never been killed during their service with the tribes. But one has been missing, one of our only female missionaries, a longtime friend of the Macklin family who left Bethlehem two years ago for the Ohio country and was never seen again. We watch for any sign of her. The Reverend is leaving for a meeting with the church elders soon to discuss resuming the search for her." As he spoke he shook the pouch again. A second, very small bag fell out onto the ground.

When Duncan opened it and tilted it over his hand four silver buttons fell onto his palm. Two were worked with the same fish as those he had found at the Monongahela, two were embossed with crossed swords.

"The dead Virginian," he explained to his companions. "Had silver buttons cut off his waistcoat." He reached into his own belt pouch and produced the button he had taken from Burke's corpse. It was identical to the two with swords from Ohio George's pouch.

Duncan then began pulling papers from the separate, smaller case he had found hidden in the lean-to. Tattered letters from a lawyer in Philadelphia to Francis Townsend, hectoring for a debt. A small worn New Testament bearing Townsend's name on the inside plate, which he handed to Moses. A broadside advertising a public display of Dr. Franklin's experiments with natural fire, on the back of which was the beginning of a letter. Dear Catherine, it said in a careful hand. Fair weather makes for a quick journey. I look forward to my return with resources enough to hire carpenters.

"This man Townsend has been to Shamokin more than once," Moses said. "The last time as a surveyor, heading down the Warriors Path. He went west and never came back. A magistrate sent inquiries, but there was no trace of him."

Red Hand began to laugh.

"Did you kill him too?" Duncan demanded. "Did Ohio George kill him?"

"Not us," the Shawnee crooned. "He said it was his job, to carry out punishment."

"Who? Who killed him?"