Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“It is a meeting place, then?” Duncan asked as he sat beside Woolford.

“The Edge of the Woods place is what the tribes call it. Old Jacob and Hendrick used to tell of such ceremonies they joined as young warriors. It is where those who came out of the woods met those not of the woods. Those who came from afar would talk about the difficulties of their journey, to show the sacrifice made for the sake of discourse among peoples, speaking loudly so the messengers in the trees would hear.

“Each chief would hold a wampum belt to underscore the importance, to show the truth of his words. It was also done between tribes, before Europeans came. The host would symbolically wipe the sweat from the traveler’s limbs and pretend to pull thorns from his feet, then clean the eyes and ears and mouth, to be certain all would be clearly understood. Sometimes evil spirits would follow from deep in the woods, and words had to be said to drive them away.”

Duncan looked about again. He had arrived at the edge of the woods, Sarah had said when Duncan had arrived, and earned the unspoken censure of her father for using the words. “A wampum belt?” he asked, not sure why he was whispering. He gazed upward, into the dense, glittering canopy supported by the broad grey columns of the beeches. It was as if they were in a cathedral.

Woolford replied by standing and stepping to the stone platform. With both hands he pushed back the heavy stone on top, and Duncan joined to help lean it against the stack. The long, narrow stones underneath had been crisscrossed to form a hollow in the center. From the compartment Woolford lifted a bundle of leather, unfolded it, and extracted a four-inch-wide belt of small beads, strung in intricate patterns. As he unfolded it to its full three-foot length, Duncan saw that the background of one half was made of white beads, its many figures depicted in purple, and the other half was of purple background, with white figures. Between the two squares at either end were the shapes of men and women, houses, deer, and axes, with a tree at the center.

“It is their way of saying important things, of sending important messages,” the ranger explained. “When they hold such a belt, they can only speak the truth.”

“What does this one say?” Duncan realized he had seen such beads before, or one such bead, in the empty sack on Old Jacob’s belt, and recalled the alarmed way Woolford had stared at the single purple bead.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one like it.” Woolford seemed shaken, more worried than Duncan had seen him yet.

In the silence that followed, Duncan recalled the reason he had sought Woolford. “Hawkins took several of the men. Where did they go?”

For once, the ranger offered a direct answer. “We followed their tracks ten miles upriver. They joined others, with three canoes. Not far north, one man climbed out on the opposite bank. Fitch started to follow him, but then two more bodies came floating down the river. Settlers, dead several days. We dug graves instead.”

Duncan found himself looking toward the river. It was like wilderness kept coughing up the dead. “They call Hawkins a trapper.”

“He started making his living by taking fur pelts, years ago. Mink, otter, beaver, marten. He would boast about how he devised traps that did not kill right away, that would only pin them, sometimes for days, until he had the time to personally cut their throats. Now he sells his finely honed skills to the highest bidder.”

“Including the army?”

“The highest bidder,” Woolford repeated.

“Is he going to Stony Run?”

Woolford offered no reply.

“If you seek the murderers from Stony Run, Captain, tell me why you keep coming back to Edentown?”

“This belt,” Woolford replied in a voice gone melancholy, “may be the closest I’ve come to an answer. The tribes are very wary of words, and whom they give them to. They believe in showing, not telling,” he added as he studied the belt again.

“Last night in my classroom I made two lists on my slateboard,” Duncan revealed after a long silence. “On the one side it said salt, evil eye, bee, iron, Scottish cross, deiseal circuit.”

“Deiseal?”

Duncan paused to explain the meaning of each in Highland tradition. “Beside that list I wrote another: bird skulls, wolf clan arrow, beaver, crooked man, crooked tree, painted feather, bear. I could add wampum beads. ” He explained what Jonathan had shown him that morning.

Woolford grew very quiet.

“Since the day Evering died, a dialogue has been under way, using mystical signs of the Highlands and the Iroquois. It isn’t so much the pattern of violence that holds the key, it is the pattern of that conversation.”

Woolford had closed his eyes. “A bear,” he said. “Why did you list a bear?”

Duncan was not ready to speak about the stone bear that had been rescued by Adam from Woolford’s trunk, or the nightmare he had suffered the night before, of Adam tossing the stone bear between blood-soaked hands. “On the road past the inn,” he said instead, “a baby bear was executed on a rope, the day Jacob died.”

Woolford looked as if he had been struck. “Why did you not tell me this?”

“Why,” Duncan rejoined, “would I think you needed to know? What is it about a bear that frightens those who have fought in the wilderness?”

Duncan watched with unsettling confusion as the ranger closed his hand into a fist, tapped his heart, then, with two fingers pointed up, made a spiraling motion toward the sky. “What it is about a bear,” Woolford whispered, “can never be spoken.”

Duncan pulled out the brass cylinder he had taken from Ramsey’s safe room and dangled it before Woolford. “Then speak about this.”

“A case for slow match,” the ranger said absently, his gaze back on the wampum belt. “Grenadiers carry them, usually on their chest straps. Not many grenade bombs are used over here, but grenadiers still carry the cases. It’s part of their tradition, part of their official uniform.” Duncan’s inquiry finally seemed to register with him, and he looked up. “Where did you find it?”

“In the forest,” Duncan lied. “One of those soldiers must have dropped it.”

Woolford frowned, then took the metal case, staring at it. “They’re infantry sent from New York town, not grenadiers,” he said with a puzzled expression, then pocketed the case. He stood and carried the belt back to the stone pillar, pausing before setting it back inside.

“Is it a call to war?” Duncan asked.

“They send what they call a black belt for war. All purple.” The ranger seemed to reconsider. “I don’t know. Fitch says Iroquois camps are being systematically raided, small groups are being killed in secret. The raiders use canoes so we can’t track them. The tribes may be calling a war council, keeping it secret from the army. But this belt, it has the messages all mixed. War, death, women, prisoners, celebration. Fitch met some warriors north of here. They were excited, on edge. They used words he had never heard before. He says they seemed to be speaking about miracles, or signs from spirits that had been long sleeping. A miracle of the water, one of the earth, one of the sky. Nothing makes sense.”

Duncan pointed to the tree in the center of the belt. “It looks like it has a stick man at the top.”

“A man in a tree.” The tension in the ranger’s voice seemed to say it was the sign that worried him most of all. “Some in the Six use it to indicate a prophet. A man in a tree. A crown of antlers.”

“Antlers?”

“Deer antlers, tied in a circle with vines. A tribute paid to prophets.”

Duncan studied the belt, and Woolford’s troubled gaze. “It could have been here for years.”