Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Duncan’s head swam, his vision blurred. The Company men swarmed around him. He was vaguely aware of movement at his back, of something cold on his shoulder. By the time he understood and tried to resist, it was too late. One of the hinged iron collars was on his neck, with a small, bent hook fastened in the holes at the rear.

“Your hot Scottish blood blinds you to the simplest of facts,” Ramsey hissed. “The Ramsey Company requested your transportation to America. The Ramsey Company can rescind its request. You, sir, will be shipped back to England in irons with a long list of new crimes, signed by myself as magistrate. I vow to you, McCallum, you will rot away the rest of your miserable life in a moldy English cell.”

A figure appeared beside Ramsey, and a hand seized the patron’s arm as it rose to slap Duncan again. Woolford was instantly surrounded by Cameron’s men.

“And you, Captain Woolford, will be mucking barracks stables in India by the time I finish with you.”

Woolford surveyed the hungry faces of the men around him. The ranger had only a handful of his own men to back him up, and once they were out of the wilderness, the world belonged to Ramsey. As Duncan watched, Woolford cast a glance toward the path to the sacred valley. They both knew it would take little encouragement for some of the Scots there to deal permanently with Ramsey. But if they let him be killed, none of them-neither Duncan, nor Woolford, nor Jamie-could ever face Sarah again. The ranger dropped his hand and retreated, pulling Sarah with him.

Ramsey watched as the ranger faded into the shadows, then turned toward the post and spat a quick command. Duncan saw the motion of a thick piece of firewood being swung through the air. It knocked him to his knees. As he fought for his breath, a second blow connected with his skull and flattened him against the ground.

When he regained consciousness, Duncan had been untied from the post and a rope had been fastened to the collar. He watched as if from a distance as Cameron strung the rope over a limb and heaved, tightening it so that Duncan had to stand on the balls of his feet. They left him there in the chill autumn air and returned to their blankets. By the time someone loosened the knot, in the small hours of the night, he was so wracked with pain, he could only collapse onto the ground.

At dawn he was awakened with cold water on his face as the Company men made ready for travel. Cameron pulled Duncan to his feet in time to see Ramsey throw his pack into the underbrush, then the keeper led him down the trail to the river like a leashed dog, out of the now-abandoned Iroquois village.

Duncan stared at the earth as he walked, reliving a memory of his long-ago day on the mast. A black wave was speeding toward him again. Ramsey was pushing him into it, and afterward he would have no life.

Suddenly Cameron spat a warning and lifted the club in his hand, then relaxed as Woolford stepped onto the trail, followed by Sarah, in a green dress, her hair neatly combed, her face scrubbed. “The rangers are taking Major Pike downriver,” she announced in a flat voice. “We have readied more canoes. If we leave now, with so many men to help with the portages, we can be at Edentown tomorrow afternoon.”

“This escapee,” Ramsey said, with a gesture toward Duncan, “receives a hundred lashes when we reach Edentown. And I have decided that two days after we return, the old man hangs.”

“You cannot!” Duncan’s protest came out so loud every man turned toward him. “The governor must approve first.”

“I have decided to ask his forgiveness,” Ramsey explained in an imperious tone, “rather than his permission. I will explain the crisis of law and order that we face and the need for a speedy resolution. He will understand when I explain that our town is populated with Scottish convicts. But before we hang him, McCallum, we will bind him to the scaffold and make him watch as we flay the skin from your back.”

Sarah and Woolford turned down the trail without reply. On one of Woolford’s shoulders hung Duncan’s haversack; on the other, an extra rifle. Duncan’s rifle.

Three strangers waited at the first of the ranger’s canoes, all wearing Highland bonnets and dark plaid kilts, their top half naked save for sleeveless waistcoats and chest straps. Not strangers, Duncan realized with a start. Jamie and two of his men, having scrubbed off their paint and shifted to a semblance of European dress, were traveling with them. His brother offered no acknowledgment as Duncan caught his eye before being dragged toward a canoe, did not seem to notice as Cameron shoved him downward to soak his clothes, assuring he would shiver in the cool air.

The river was faster than Duncan could have imagined. The canoes shot downstream until sunset, then the party stopped to camp on an island, where two fires were lit-one for the Ramsey men, the second for Woolford and the others. Duncan, tethered to a tree, was given a strip of dried meat to chew and otherwise ignored as his captors covered themselves for sleep. Then a shadow appeared at his side. Sarah arranged a blanket over his legs, then rolled herself in another blanket, to sleep beside him, though they did not sleep at first, only leaned against the tree, her head nestled in his shoulder. There were no words between them, not simply because the others might hear, but because he knew it was the not the way of Sarah or the Iroquois who had raised her to give words to what rose in their hearts, only to show it. And in these moments he felt their roles reversed, as if he were the wild deer about to bolt.

He only spoke when the moon was high, when he was certain the Company men all slept. “They were going to use you as bait to attract Tashgua,” he said. “You realized it, and with Adam and Evering gone, you did not know how to stop it. It’s why you made the ritual at the compass, then went out on that mast in the storm.”

He could feel her nod against his shoulder. “Adam was arranging for Evering to help me escape,” Sarah whispered. “Evering would meet Conawago in New York town, and Conawago would take me away.”

“But Adam and Evering died,” Duncan said, weighing her words. “You ran away from the inn to the mission. You could have gone into the forest. Why did you go to Edentown?”

“Because of you, Duncan, and what happened to Mr. Lister. When I heard about that, at the inn, I knew Lord Ramsey would destroy you both.”

“Why the barn, Sarah?” he asked after weighing the puzzles of the past ten days.

Her reply, slow in coming, sent a shudder down his back. “Because Lord Ramsey and Hawkins share the same skin,” she said in a cracked voice.

He touched her cheek. It was soaked with tears.

Duncan gazed at the moon a long time, mentally reciting the list of the McCallum clan chiefs, then asked her to find Woolford. She returned with the ranger and a god. The Indian wearing the spirit mask gazed at him with hollow eyes as Duncan explained the battle to come.

The gallows was nearly complete when they arrived at Edentown, a whipping post with an iron ring already sunk into the ground beside it. The men of the Company would not look Duncan in the eye as he stumbled along the main street, pulled on his leash by Cameron. He resisted as he passed the smithy, and though the jerk of the rope nearly knocked him off his feet, he paused long enough to make out the silent shadowy form in the charcoal crib, and to see the bony fingers that gripped the slats. Lister, looking like a ghost, was watching the finishing touches on his gibbet.

Ramsey’s spirits had risen steadily as they approached the town, and by the time he climbed onto the bank near his massive barn, he was snapping orders, calling for men to clear the desks from the schoolhouse, to line the classroom with benches, to straighten a fence rail here, clean a harness there. He completed his promenade when he reached Duncan, now tied to the hitching post at the schoolhouse steps.