Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“Go now,” Sarah urged. She had already packed and tied his sack.

“There’s an old Scot in a prison cell,” he reminded her.

“They may well kill you tonight, Duncan.” There was a new strength in Sarah’s voice, along with her foreboding. “One of the soldiers saw what you did with the king’s paper. He told Cameron.”

The camp settled quickly for the night, with the Ramsey men tied to the posts of one of the lodges. Duncan waited for nearly two hours, then rose from his blanket and stepped into the shadows, carrying his loaded rifle. He walked the length of the trail to the canoe landing at the river and back, studying each bend and curve, each pool of moonlight, trying to mimic the soundless way the Indians and rangers moved through the forest. Upon his return, he watched the slumbering camp for several minutes, confirmed that the Iroquois were all still on the far side of the ridge, preparing the dead by torchlight, and then retreated to the back of the lodge where the prisoners had been taken. The lodge was old and in disrepair. He had made a point of being there as the men were being tied, joining Alex as the boy offered a gourd dipper of water to each prisoner, noting the position of the men and the lodge poles they were bound to. He had marked one of the posts on the outside of the lodge with a white stone, and now, glancing one more time to confirm no one watched, he drew his knife and quickly sliced through the leather strap around the post. Then he rose and slipped back down the river trail.

He had waited only ten minutes behind a boulder where the trail opened onto the river flats before he made out the sound of running feet. His timing was not perfect as he sprang in front of the man, but it was good enough for him to land a glancing blow to the man’s temple that knocked him to the ground.

Hawkins had begun to squirm away when he saw the rifle leveled at his chest.

“You murdered an old Iroquois today,” Duncan growled. “A bullet in the back of his head.”

“And here I thought no one appreciated my work,” Hawkins sneered. The trapper glanced left and right. As his hand inched toward a stone, Duncan kicked it away. “He would have been dead a moment later anyways.”

“But then you would have lost the bounty,” Duncan continued in an icy tone. “If Jamie had died in the blast, you would have had no claim to the money. Except you shot the wrong man.”

“An honest mistake,” Hawkins spat. “Who would have thought he would give his coat to some old buck?”

Duncan pulled back the hammer on the rifle. “Leave Jamie be, Hawkins.”

The oily trapper studied Duncan’s moonlit face. “Y’er the one who set me free? That be y’er bargain, boy? My freedom for y’er brother’s life? I don’t deal with slaves. And Ramsey would have me free on the morrow anyways.”

“Then why do you run, Hawkins? Because you fear I get close to a truth you can’t have others know? Like how Frasier died? That’s the price. Take a bullet now or tell me what happened at dawn that day.”

It was the lowest of pugilist tricks that undid Duncan, a quick hook of a foot around his calf that caused him to totter long enough for Hawkins to grab the barrel of the rifle. The trapper sprang up like a cat, wrenching the rifle away, clubbing Duncan with it. Suddenly Duncan was on the ground, the end of the rifle pressed against his neck as Hawkins probed his belt, lifting away Duncan’s ranger knife. Pressing the blade against Duncan’s throat, tucking the gun under an arm, the trapper deftly opened the frizzen pan and blew away the priming, rendering the gun useless.

“Ye’ve only a wee bit of a killer in ye, boy,” the trapper said, amusement in his tone as he tossed the gun aside. “Not near enough to survive in these parts.”

Duncan made a slight movement of resistance, twisting his spine, and the blade flashed downward, slicing into his arm before returning to his throat.

“I need money, boy.”

“I haven’t any.”

Hawkins sighed, raised the knife again, slower this time, toying with Duncan, bringing it down to slice the other arm. But suddenly it was frozen, immovable against the head of a war ax whose iron spike suddenly protruded through the flesh of Hawkins’s forearm. He uttered a long groan before grabbing the knife with his other hand, poised to throw it at the old Indian who held the ax. Then he froze once more, his entire body solid, as if it had gone numb. The knife slowly came down.

With a quick, crablike motion Duncan moved out of reach, then followed the trapper’s gaze. Hawkins looked not toward Conawago, who still held the ax that had impaled his arm, but toward a round, shimmering thing that floated in the moonlight.

It was an image of a raven, black against yellow. It was Adam Munroe’s medallion, stolen by Duncan’s attackers the day he had left Edentown.

“Drop the blade,” Conawago said in a cool, fierce voice. “McCallum wants an answer about a murder.”

The knife did drop, but Hawkins did not speak. For a moment he had the look of one of the doomed animals that thrashed in his traps. Then his hollow, cold-blooded gaze returned. With impossible coolness, he pulled his arm free of the ax spike. His muscles coiled. He seemed about to leap at the shadowy figure with the medallion. But when he launched himself, it was backward, out onto the flats.

Duncan grabbed his knife and raced toward the canoes, a step in front of Conawago, thinking Hawkins was intent on stealing one. But when they reached the vessels, none were missing, and they could see a dark figure raising silver water as he hurried across the waist-deep river.

When they returned to the trail, the one who had been holding the medallion was sitting on a moonlit boulder, staring forlornly at the black bird in his hand.

“Sarah said you knew my brother,” Ravencatcher said to Duncan.

“Adam Munroe was your brother?”

“The husband of my sister is my brother,” Tashgua’s son explained. He cradled the medallion in his fingers. “You were there, when he died?”

“He died strong. He died for your sister.”

“I gave this to him, on the day they became husband and wife.”

“I lost it, the day I left Edentown.”

“And I found it,” explained Conawago, “on the dead man lying against the tree at the cabin.”

Duncan stared in the direction Hawkins had fled, then slowly tuned back toward Ravencatcher. “You should keep it,” he said.

“No. It is right that you have it, McCallum,” said the Iroquois. “Adam would wish it so. My second sister would wish it so,” Ravencatcher added, then thrust the quillwork medallion into Duncan’s hand and slipped away into the shadows. His second sister. He meant Sarah.

“Don’t go back to the camp,” Conawago warned. “Tashgua’s men are all at the embers of the old tree, with his body, which is where Ravencatcher and I go now. Ramsey woke to find Woolford gone, and untied his men.”

But Duncan knew the only way he could return to Edentown was in Ramsey’s chains.

A bright fire was burning as he entered the camp, with Ramsey and his head keeper standing beside it. A new fury had risen on Ramsey’s face. He had revived, and had spoken with Cameron.

The patron stepped toward Duncan as soon as he saw him. Something wild and hot had grown in Ramsey’s eyes. With surprising speed he lifted an arm and slapped Duncan, hard.

“Sedition!” Ramsey hissed. “I curse the day the good reverend laid eyes on you!” He turned to Cameron, standing in front of the remaining Company men. “Seize him!”

Cameron glanced toward the ridge path, then leapt forward. He held Duncan at both sides as Ramsey slapped him again, and again. “You were the one who encouraged her. You were the one with the impudence to defy me, to steal my trust. You were the one who destroyed my charter!”