Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Suddenly in front of him was a small, ragged piece of green cloth, on the trail between two fallen trees. He halted, looking quickly about. The birds had stopped singing. The cloth was reminiscent of one of Sarah’s green dresses. As he dropped to one knee to retrieve it, something slammed into the crown of his head. He collapsed, rolling, reaching for his hand ax, hearing a grunt of amusement, smelling an odor of rancid fat. As the ax cleared his belt, he lashed out at the quick, shadowy shapes that accosted him, landing a blow that caused a moan of pain, groping with his free hand to wipe the blood that was dripping into his eyes. A wrenching howl, like those he had heard in the Edentown raid, rent the air. As Duncan spun about to face its source, he saw only a blur of movement. Someone hit him in the back, slamming him to the ground; his tongue tasted the forest loam. He twisted futilely, saw the flash of a blade as someone straddled his back. Another man uttered a sound like a curse, and something hard hit him again. His last memory was the ring of a tiny bell.

Duncan floated in a terrible, dark place that echoed with the shouts of the Indians and remnants of Crispin’s stories of Indian torture. Never before had he experienced such deep, piercing pain as that which now gripped his skull. As he gained consciousness, he stretched his hands to search the black night around him. Nothing but twigs and dried leaves. But he heard the music of morning birds, felt the soft, warm wind that came after dawn. A long, mournful groan escaped his throat. He was blind.

His heart rattling against his ribs, his breath coming hard and fast, he groped about and finally raised a trembling hand and discovered a cloth bandage tightly tied around his skull, covering his eyes.

“I’d rather we leave it for another hour,” a deep, slow voice intoned from a few feet away. “Let the herbs draw out the filth. Those gentlemen seldom clean their blades.”

Duncan lowered his hand and turned his head in the direction of the voice. He smelled smoke, sensed the dull heat of a fire.

“It took a stitch or two,” the stranger observed. His voice was quiet and soothing, like that of the old priests Duncan had known as a boy. “The last of my good silk thread.”

Duncan grew very still as the words sank in. “Are you saying they wanted to lift my hair?”

“I’m saying they did lift it. Or made genuine progress at it. I knew a man who survived the completed act,” the stranger said in a whimsical tone. “Nothing but bone on top. He had seven wool caps of different colors, one for each day of the week.”

There was movement, a hand reached around his neck, pulling him upward, and a hot tin mug was pressed to his lips. Its contents were bitter yet sweet. It smelled faintly of anise and roseberries. He sat up, fighting the stabs of pain in his skull, and eagerly drank.

“How did a gentleman such as yourself come to the deep forest?” Duncan asked when he had drained the mug, wondering who his savior could be, but quickly settled on an image of a well-schooled Englishman in a greatcoat, probably with an expensive fowling piece and a game bag. He remembered there were men of science who compiled descriptions of New World flora and fauna, who would know how to concoct a healing tea of local herbs. “Do you pursue natural philosophy then?”

He thought he heard a low sound that might have marked amusement, then sensed movement behind him. The man seemed to move without disturbing the debris on the forest floor. “Lean back,” his companion advised. “I have made you a pillow of moss.”

The tea, Duncan discovered, was quickly making him drowsy. “I have studied the sciences, too,” he began, the awkward words blurring together as he eased back into the cool, soft cushion.

When he awoke, the pain in his head had subsided to a dull ache. The forest seemed alive with sounds he had never heard before. Where he had heard only a random whistling before, he now discerned half a dozen melodies from the trees, over the rustle of leaves and the chirping of squirrels. He slowly eased the bandage from his eyes for a glimpse of his benefactor.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the late afternoon sun. Shielding his eyes with his open hand, he slowly focused on the back of a figure rummaging through a sack, a man attired in deerskin leggings and a ragged muslin shirt, his long black hair gathered together in the back with a strip of leather into which had been inserted a long mottled feather that hung downward.

With painful effort, Duncan seized a nearby limb from the forest floor and launched himself on the thief. “Murderer! What have you done to him?” he demanded as he slammed the limb into the heathen’s spine, knocking him to the ground. The kind Englishman who had saved him had been killed by this Indian. All the anger and frustration of recent weeks erupted within him, filling him with a wild, dark energy. At last he had found an enemy he could deal with.

The savage groaned as Duncan hit him again and again, repeating his furious demand, then rolled away as Duncan faltered, swaying as his head began spinning. The Indian leaned against a moss-covered boulder, his eyes filled with pain, as Duncan dropped to his knees, a hand to his temple. The throbbing returned, now a low, steady roll of thunder in his head.

“If you insist on this frantic activity,” the Indian declared, gasping, speaking in the deep voice Duncan had heard earlier, “I fear your wound will open again.”

Duncan stared at the man, his jaw agape, looking about the small clearing, then into the forest and back to the stranger again. The man’s face was as worn as a river stone, and his bright, intelligent eyes fixed Duncan with a steady, if sad, gaze. Around his neck hung a necklace of glass beads from which hung a small fur-bound amulet. At the end of a second necklace, a leather braid that had had been freed from inside his shirt during Duncan’s attack, were two small silver cones that made a tinkling sound when he moved. Like tiny bells.

“I didn’t. . I don’t. . ” Words failed Duncan. Still on his knees, propping himself with his makeshift weapon, he silently gawked at the man.

When the stranger lifted his hand, Duncan thought it was to make a gesture of warning. But instead he slowly extended one finger, first to his lips, then to a shrub at the edge of the clearing. Duncan followed the finger to a bird, with scarlet body and black wings, that burst into a light melody as it studied the two men. They listened without moving for over a minute, until the bird flitted away.

“In the tongue of my boyhood we called him Firecatcher. I have never heard an English name for it. You English have so few names for the important things.”

Duncan looked back at the man with the same curious gaze the bird had used. “I am called Duncan McCallum. In the tongue of my boyhood I would be called ungrateful.”

A small grin stirred on the man’s face. “If you wish you may call me Conawago.”

“Scottish. I am Scottish, not English.” Duncan nervously surveyed the forest again.

Conawago offered a nod toward the base of a big tree near the circle of their camp. “They are gone.” At the bottom of the tree were splinters of wood and three long barrels, the remains of three muskets. “Without their guns those kind are like frightened children.”

“Who else?” Duncan asked, watching the forest again. “Are your companions nearby?”

“As I grow older, I find the company better when I travel alone.” Conawago returned Duncan’s stare with the same inquisitive, slightly amused gaze he had fixed on the scarlet bird, then with a wince of pain he rose and resumed loading his bag.

As he did so Duncan noticed streaks of red on the back of the man’s shirt. “I injured you,” he said, stricken with guilt. Conawago was probably three times Duncan’s age. He had not only viciously attacked an old man, he had attacked the man who had saved his life.