Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“We never know how long we’ll be out,” the young ranger explained as he reached for the piece of iron, “don’t know if we’ll get back to a quartermaster before winter.” He saw the confusion in Duncan’s eyes. “An ice creeper. You strap it to the bottom of your boots.”

Duncan quickly pulled out the grenadier’s cap from Ramsey’s cellar. The four pointed legs matched the four small holes perfectly. “Who is issued these?” he urgently asked the soldier.

“Rangers. The other troops stay in winter quarters.”

The curses of the Irishman died away as Duncan approached Woolford, extending the creeper, silently demonstrating how the legs matched the holes in the cap.

“Meaning what?” Woolford still hovered over the sergeant as if about to pounce again at any moment.

Duncan replied by holding the cap and the creeper in front of the sergeant.

“A pox on y’er mother!” the sergeant spat.

“His left cheek,” Duncan said. When the sergeant resisted, turning the cheek against the rock, two of the Iroquois Scots held the man, forcing his head around. “It’s hard to see for the grime,” Duncan said, and before he could continue, Woolford had grabbed a kettle sitting by the cold firepit and tossed its contents onto the man’s face. The scars were there, as Duncan had seen at the ranger camp-two pairs of small circles spaced four inches apart. He held the creeper to the man’s cheek. On the skin, as with the hat, the marks were perfectly aligned to the ice spikes.

“A ranger did this to you,” Duncan stated. “A ranger stripped of his weapons, fighting with the only thing he could find.”

The sergeant glared at Duncan, then shot an uncertain glance at Woolford. “Not rangers. French. Spies. Infiltrators in army clothes. The major gets information about such.”

“Where are the others who were with you that day?” Duncan demanded. “In the boats to Edentown?”

“Not them. The others be gone. Assigned to new posts, every last one. India. . some to Jamaica.”

“How convenient.”

“Damned your eyes! They were French we killed by the tree that day. Scouting targets for the Huron raiding parties. The major warned us that they sometimes used ranger uniforms, for deception.”

“You did not think it strange that Pike had you change your own uniforms to those of the Forty-ninth?”

“Confuse the enemy about troop placements, that’s why. That’s part of what his office does. They were French, I tell you!”

“Sergeant!” Pike shouted. “I command you to hold your damned tongue! Do not be beguiled by these outlaws!”

One of Jamie’s men pounded a slab of firewood against his temple. Pike slumped, slid down the post to the ground.

“Not French,” came a ragged, angry voice from the shadows. Two new rangers had appeared, carrying between them in a litter the blond Scot Duncan had left at the mission. “You murdered them in cold blood.” One of the rangers carried a crutch, hung with a shoulder strap along his rifle. He removed the crutch and extended it to the wounded Scot. The man refused help as he struggled to his feet.

“Ten of you bastards,” he hissed, “six of them, all but one asleep. I was helping them after the massacre at the tree, following the tracks of those who had done it, was running back in the dawn to tell them I found a fresh camp not far away. A camp for ten men, abandoned before dawn. I ran back with the news but stopped when I got near, because I didn’t understand what I was seeing. A grenadier walks up to the ranger lighting the morning fire, talking all friendly-like, then quick as lightning he has a dagger to the ranger’s throat, warning against any sound. I thought it was me they wanted, for desertion, so I hid. I didn’t really understand until it was over. It took less than a minute. A volley of muskets, then they finished those still living with bayonets. Only one lived long enough to fight you, you bastard, and that only with his ice creeper, because you took all their weapons. Then his skull was crushed from behind with the butt of a Brown Bess.”

Duncan angrily threw the grenadier’s cap at the sergeant’s head. “A blow with the ice creeper to your cheek. Another blow to your crown into your borrowed cap, with enough force to knock the cap off. You didn’t bother to pick it up.”

“Because by then he was running after me,” the wounded Scot explained.

“But someone else picked it up later.” Duncan glanced toward the shadows where the bound Ramsey men sat watching, all except Hawkins, who leaned against a tree, sleeping. “Probably Hawkins. He found it and gave it to Arnold. Hawkins and Arnold eventually understood the significance.” Duncan looked up to Woolford, whose face was dark with anger. “It was how they got Pike to help them this time. Pike showed them how it was done, finding easy unarmed targets at the sacred tree. And once they understood about the death ritual, Ramsey knew it could repeat it a year later to destroy the remaining old chiefs.” Duncan leaned over the sergeant. “Just hide on the ridge and fire down on them when they were lined up by the sacred tree. Is that how you did it last year?”

The sergeant cast a baleful glance at the Scots. “Those deserters last year were going to die no matter what. No one said anything about the others there being Iroquois. If Indians were with the traitors, they had to be Huron, the major said. They were just Indians,” he added, his voice gone hollow.

“Tell me, Sergeant,” Duncan asked, “did someone try to transfer you, too?”

The burly man seemed to be shrinking before their eyes. He nodded slowly. “The major gave me papers for the East Indies. But I took sick with the flux the day before sailing. When I was finally fit for duty, they needed every able-bodied man, so transfers were cancelled.” His face, turned to the ground, had become gaunt. “God’s breath!” he groaned. “I never. . I wouldn’t have. . our own rangers,” he said in a desolate whisper, and kept repeating the words. “Our own rangers. .”

“Nothing is settled,” Woolford said as they sat in front of one of the back lodges an hour later, giving voice to the new foreboding that had been growing in Duncan’s own heart since returning to the village. Duncan poked with a wooden spoon at the corn mush they were eating for supper, nodding his agreement. A gallows was still being built in Edentown. Those of Tashgua’s band who survived could no longer stay in the village, for the army knew where they were now. Duncan’s heart still wrenched every time he thought of Sarah, who was to be taken back to have her brain opened. And Woolford, Duncan knew, was beginning to understand what for him may be the harshest reality of all. They had no assurance that once back in their world either Ramsey or Pike would pay for what they had done.

“But the tribes,” Duncan ventured. “The tribes know what Ramsey did.”

“And they will do what?” Woolford interjected in a bitter tone. “Bring a suit of law against Ramsey?”

“The war. Official action will have to be taken, to protect the alliance.”

“No,” the ranger sighed. “The ones killed were the ones who wanted the Iroquois to end the alliance, to stop taking sides in the affairs of Europeans. This just makes it easier for the tribes to keep sending warriors to Albany. For the old ones, what will be remembered is that the sacred bear is revived, a sign that the old ways are not totally dead. For the young ones, what will be remembered is that the sacred tree is gone, that it destroyed itself and Tashgua with it. At many of their council fires, there will no longer be voices speaking up for the old ways.”

“There are other trees,” came a quiet, sad voice. Conawago leaned and stirred the embers of the fire before them. “When your lodge is burnt, you find another.” For a moment Duncan remembered how Conawago had sometimes paused when they traveled together to seek out sacred places, some of them rock formations, some of them old trees. “There are ceremonies, to introduce spirits to new homes.”