Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

Duncan signaled for Marston and Conawago to prop up the Dutchman as he wrapped his ribs. "What explanation?"

"Smaller balls they sell as marbles, for those who can afford something more than clay balls," Van Grut said with a wince of pain. "But he has a special customer for the larger balls. He sold a gross of them last autumn to him, to one of the Philadelphia aristocrats."

Duncan looked at Conawago. His whisper was full of foreboding. "Ramsey."

Van Grut nodded. "He labels them as trade baubles in his invoices."

Conawago sighed, then pointed out the window at one of Old Belt's men, approaching from the docks, and slipped out of the room.

Duncan was showing Miss Townsend how to change Van Grut's jaw bandage when Conawago returned ten minutes later and sat heavily on a dusty stool by the window. "Mokie is moving in and out of the market. She stole an apple at one stall, upset a basket of onions at another. She is," Conawago added pointedly, "better than that."

Duncan instantly grasped his friend's meaning. "She is trying to be seen, letting it be known there is a runaway slave girl working mischief near the docks." Several watchers, including Marston, Miss Townsend, and some of the Iroquois, had been trying to find the girl since dawn. But Mokie would not be caught unless she wanted to be caught, and she would gladly face Red Hand if it would help her friend Skanawati.

"Will Brindle cooperate?" Duncan asked.

"Call back the constables? Not likely. I don't think he has the power to do so. Not now." Conawago reached into his belt and dropped a copy of the day's Pennsylvania Gazette on the table. In the bottom corner of the cover page was a primitive cartoon, with an image of a man with the face of a cat tied at a pole, encircled by Indians with torches. On the man's chest in crude letters was written Brindle. Underneath was the uncharitable caption, The stink begins to rise from the polecat.

"Then I shall rely on Old Belt and his men."

"The bounty on your head will draw the constables like flies. They will surely take you."

Duncan noticed a short article on the page, above the cartoon. Iroquois Chief Rots in City Prison, read the headline. "The girl will be dead a moment after Red Hand sees her. Saving Mokie and capturing him will be worth the price. Easily worth six more years of indenture."

Conawago watched the ships with Duncan in silence. "You know you wouldn't survive another year, Duncan. Once in Ramsey's hands, hidden from public view, he will eventually kill you. Or sell you as a slave to some Jamaican sugar plantation. Either way you die in months."

"Sarah will hear. His daughter can stop him."

"That prospect will serve only to accelerate his plans."

Another ship began pulling away, its deck laden with cut lumber.

"It seems to me," Duncan observed in a distant voice, "we should focus on the certain death on a gallows two days from now, not the merely possible one months from now."

"You're a damned fool, Duncan McCallum. Ask Skanawati and he would tell you to stop interfering, just flee to safety in the wilds while you can."

"Then we all agree. I am a damned fool," Duncan replied, and he began outlining his plan for sunset.

The lamplighters had begun their evening rounds when Duncan and Conawago slipped out of the building, one of the soot-stained men walking in advance with a ladder and keg of whale oil to fill the city lanterns before they were lit. The day sailors and fishermen were moving home, a woman who had been selling fresh oysters lowering her baskets into the river for the night.

Conawago grabbed Duncan's arm as a long droning whistle broke through the background of sounds. Iroquois bowmen with signal arrows had been concealed at the head of every other pier, and the signal they heard came from one of the docks above Market Street. They moved at the fast, stealthy pace used when chasing deer in the forest, in and out of the shadows, slowing when the cover diminished, arriving at the dock five minutes later. An Indian rose up from behind stacks of crates and pointed to a diminutive figure perched on a mound of thick hawser rope.

Where are the constables? Duncan asked himself. Conawago had convinced him that a trap would indeed be set for him, but there was no sign of the city's enforcers. He inched along in the shadow of a row of tall hogshead barrels, then used the cover of a slow-moving freight wagon to reach the foot of the long pier that extended from the wharf that fronted the river. Mokie seemed to sense something behind her, but turned and saw nothing. Duncan, with no cover left, strode purposefully toward the girl. He was perhaps forty paces away when a shape materialized in the gray light behind Mokie. Red Hand had been under the wharf, hidden in the timbers below, and now he climbed out only a few feet from the girl.

"Mokie! Behind you!" Duncan shouted, then sprang forward. Another signal arrow sounded. A shout rose in Iroquois from the shadows of the warehouses. The girl spun about and screamed as Red Hand coolly approached, his long knife glinting in the dusk.

Duncan was in the air, leaping toward the Shawnee as he reached the girl. He hammered the Indian's knife hand down from its killing stroke. Red Hand delivered a savage kick that knocked Mokie to the ground then turned to Duncan with hatred in his eyes.

Waiting with a blade half as long as his assailant's, Duncan feigned a thrust as Red Hand charged him then landed a vicious kick on his enemy's knee. Red Hand rolled onto the planks of the pier, grinning now, and was instantly back on his feet. He fixed Duncan with a treacherous gaze, then paused as he heard the running feet on the wharf. The Indian grimaced, not with fear but with disappointment. "Another time, Scotsman," he spat, then turned and ran.

Duncan turned to quickly scan those approaching. Only his Indian allies, no constables. Had Brindle used his influence after all? He spun about to pursue the Shawnee. The Indian had fled not toward the town but further down the adjoining wharf, where two wide ships were berthed so closely together they could provide a platform to leap across to the adjacent dock, where no pursuers awaited.

Red Hand's outstretched knife warned away the sailor standing sentry at the gangway of the first ship, allowing the Shawnee to vault onto the wide deck, but a group of sailors emerging from a hatchway spotted the intruder, causing him to veer away. Duncan made a frantic leap onto the ship's bow and discovered that the rigging above was in the process of replacement, leaving several lines hanging down from the yards. He grabbed one near the far rail, pulled it back, and with a running leap and a swing across the open water he propelled himself onto the deck of the second ship. By the time Red Hand reached it Duncan was standing before him, a heavy marlin spike in his hand. The Shawnee eyed him for an instant, glanced at the pursuers, then launched himself up the shroud lines of the mainmast. It was a large ship, so large its upper rigging disappeared into the night shadow above. Duncan leapt onto the shroud lines on the opposite side of the mast and scrambled upward.

Red Hand was like a spider on the ropes, scampering over them without hesitation, leaping, twisting in midair, catching a strand as he flew. But Duncan had spent his early boyhood playing in ships' rigging, was as at home among the ropes and spars as any seasoned sailor.

It was a bizarre game of cat and mouse fought in the air. For long, agonizing moments Duncan could not see Red Hand, but each time the Shawnee was betrayed by the moonlight reflecting off his proudly oiled skin. Up the shrouds and ratlines, running out on a yard, leaping onto a stay to propel himself hand over hand from the foremast to mainmast, dropping into the broad platform of the main top, Red Hand moved with amazing stealth and speed. Pausing for a moment to study the pursuers on the wharf searching the stacks of cargo, he glanced at Duncan and disappeared. There was only the mizzenmast then the dark water of the Delaware, where Duncan would surely lose him. Duncan grabbed another stay and half-climbed, half-slid toward the maintop, watching for any sign of the Shawnee in the rigging beyond. Missing his footing as he landed on the platform, he landed with a staggering fall. The stumble saved his life, for Red Hand had concealed himself behind the broad mast and greeted Duncan with a violent lunge that would have gutted him had he not fallen. He flung out with a fist, knocking Red Hand off balance long enough to regain his feet.