Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

“It is nothing,” the Indian muttered without looking up.

“I studied to be a doctor. Let me help.”

Conawago continued his packing. “I’d as soon turn myself over to one of the old witches in the Iroquois towns than to a European doctor. Bleed this, they always say, bleed that. Take some opium. Try some Peruvian bark. Swallow some cathartic. Treat a wound by making a bigger cut.”

“I know enough to wash your wounds.”

Conawago tightened the drawstring of his bag and straightened, ignoring Duncan, looking toward heaven and making an upward spiraling motion with his hand.

“I struck you. It was. . ” Duncan searched for words. “I wronged you. Allow me to render a kindness. You saved my life.”

Conawago’s face betrayed no emotion. “It remains to be seen whether that should be considered a favor.”

“Then you at least saved me from wearing a hat for the little time I have left to live.”

A flicker of a grin crossed the old Indian’s face. “There is a stream with a pool two miles north where I can clean my wounds. I was going there in any event. Farewell. If you truly know something of doctoring, you will know you will lose consciousness long before you could get there, so do not try to follow.” He swung the bag onto his shoulder, lifted his staff, and began walking down the narrow trail that led toward the high ridges. For the first time Duncan noticed on his belt a long, curving club, its ball-shaped top carved like the head of a bird, whose bill was a lethal iron spike.

Duncan rose, staggered a few steps, and collapsed. By the time his head cleared, Conawago was out of sight. As he sat there, summoning his strength, he realized for the first time that his medallion, Adam’s medallion, was gone.

He knelt, swaying on his knees, fighting not dizziness now but shooting pain from his head and ribs, and then forced himself to his feet. With his hand ax he cut a staff, then sliced a four-inch section from a small limb, inserted it between his teeth, and began walking. He stopped every two or three hundred paces, wiping away blood that dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, clutching his head, cutting a new plug of wood when he bit through the first. The trail branched with no sign of the old Indian’s path, and he halted, trying to understand the signs he knew the people of the woods could instinctively read. There was a pool, Conawago had said. It would be the kind of place where animals would congregate. He chose the wider, more heavily used fork and kept walking.

When he finally reached the shaded, forty-foot-wide circle of water, Conawago was stripped to the waist, his back to Duncan, standing under a narrow flow of water that spilled into the pool from a ledge a few feet above his head. With a pang of shame Duncan saw the bruises and broken skin his attack had caused.

Conawago was muttering something unintelligible, catching the water that missed his head in a cupped hand and pouring it over his chest, looking up when he spoke, as if addressing the huge chestnut tree whose roots hung over the ledge above. Duncan collapsed at the bank, dropping his bag and lowering his head to the cool water, drinking it from his hand, then sluicing it over his own head.

“I have a spare shirt,” Duncan said to the Indian’s back. “I can make bandages.”

Conawago’s only response was to raise a palm toward him, to silence him. The old Indian continued speaking, sometimes to the water itself, but mostly facing upward, toward the ledge above. The old Indian had said he was coming to the pool in any event. He had come, Duncan realized, to pray to the massive tree.

He felt strangely embarrassed, wanted to turn away, but Duncan could not take his eyes from the old man. His grandfather had sometimes prayed like that, standing in an ebb tide under a full moon, refusing to come out when his mother had begged him to, laughing when their priest cursed him for a pagan.

After several minutes Conawago stopped speaking and backed a few inches away from the small waterfall. He caught more water in his hand and stared at the glistening drops. “I did not expect you,” he said in a voice like that used in a church. “Now that you are here, there are words you, too, must say.”

“I do not know your language,” Duncan said awkwardly. “I cannot remember the words you said.”

“I was apologizing for the spilled blood, and the foolishness of men. No good thing ever comes out of violence. You must always cleanse it away.” He looked for the first time at Duncan, and stepped toward him, stopping eight feet away, knee deep in the water. “The words you must use are different. Say this,” Conawago instructed, and began reciting words in the tongue Sarah had used.

Slowly, clumsily Duncan repeated the sounds.

Conawago nodded, then continued, speaking a few syllables at a time. Duncan echoed each phrase without comprehension, recognizing only one word of the many spoken. Ohskenonton. Deer.

“What does it mean?” Duncan asked when they finished.

“A prayer to the forest spirits. Difficult to translate. First, you asked for forgiveness for being so ignorant as to enter the forest without trying to know it, without respecting it. You said you knew you will die soon, but you just want another day or two to be able to show homage to the spirits, to try to find your true skin. You said you were no better than a pile of moldy deer droppings, but sometimes you will remember to put a hand on a tree and give thanks. It is a prayer taught to children in case they get lost in the forest.” There was no amusement, no mocking on Conawago’s face. “Now take something you need and give it to the forest.”

A sharp retort leapt to Duncan’s tongue, but he kept silent, breaking Conawago’s harsh, penetrating stare to kneel and open his bag. He extracted the small, hard loaf Crispin had packed for him, then cast the bread toward the current that flowed along the far side of the pool and watched as it gradually floated down the stream, slowly sinking.

When he looked back, Conawago was holding a large river pebble under the waterfall, whispering to it. After a moment the old Indian turned, shouted out several words in his native tongue, and threw the stone high, so that it disappeared into the chestnut towering above.

Duncan bent to pick up his bag, realizing the sturdy old Indian truly did not need his help. “I thank you for your kindness, and I shall trouble you no-” The words fell away as Conawago turned to squarely face him, for the first time allowing Duncan a view of his naked chest. The bag slipped from his hands and Duncan found himself in the water, an arm’s length from the Indian, staring at the intricate tattoo on Conawago’s chest. “The wolf clan of the Mohawk,” he declared in a cracking voice, then pointed to the pattern of rays that radiated from the Indian’s left shoulder. “The sign of the dawn chasers.”

Conawago’s hand went to the club that still hung from his belt. “Where did you steal such secrets?” he demanded, his voice suddenly sharp.

“The last time I saw that wolf, it was on a man’s chest. He wore his sign of the sun over his ear.”

The Indian surveyed Duncan, head to foot, as if he had never seen him before. “You are a friend of Jacob the Fish?”

Duncan shook his head uneasily. “I helped to clean his body with some who were his friends.”

Conawago leaned forward, intensely studying Duncan’s face as if looking for the truth in his words, then he seemed to sag. The old Indian released the club, stepped to a flat boulder at the side of the pool, and collapsed onto it. “When the black snake wind blows, it must be obeyed,” he said in a sorrowful tone.

“He was attacked near the Dutch inn after the Ramsey Company crossed the Hudson. They tried to scalp him.”