Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

As the man flinched and twisted, Duncan saw the ugly color of the leg in the sunlight. Without conscious thought, he stepped forward around the edge of the blanket.

“Gangrene.” The terrible word leapt out uncontrolled, as if he were suddenly in his Edinburgh classroom again. “It will be rotten soon.”

The woman gasped. The man stretched for his knife but recoiled in agony, his only resistance a curse as Duncan knelt beside him to examine the wound, then sniff it. It was an old bullet wound, poorly healed over, which had broken open and festered. “How long ago were you shot?” He sniffed the poultice, then nodded with approval. Oatmeal and linseed.

“Nigh a year,” the man grunted, clenching his jaw again in obvious pain. “It was wedged into the bone. It’s been no problem until now.”

“It has become dislodged and is moving about,” Duncan declared, “mortifying the flesh. If we do not cut, the gangrene will take hold.”

“Cut?” the woman asked in a stunned tone.

“I studied with surgeons. We need more water, scalding hot. Your best knife, freshened on a stone. Rum. Lots of rum. Have you knitting needles?”

The woman nervously nodded. “But my uncle allows no spirits here, none closer than the bark mill.”

“Then he must be carried outside to the table, with men to hold him down and a strap in his mouth. And cover his eyes. He must not watch the blade.”

The man’s eyes had gone wild and round. “Like hell you’ll cut me.” His words were few but enough for Duncan to recognize the Scottish burr.

“Then you will die,” Duncan declared, the firmness in his voice surprising even him. “As certain as daybreak you will die a terrible and slow death if we do not remove the offending metal and clean the wound inside. This time next week you’ll be in the ground.”

The words took all the fight out of the man on the pallet.

In a quarter hour all was ready, and in another quarter hour Duncan was done, sewing up his incision with the mission’s finest thread. He looked up at last to find an audience of eight wary faces. “Now,” he said, finding his confidence rapidly leaving him, “all we can do is pray.”

“That,” solemnly replied Martin Zettlemeyer, “is what we do best.”

A great wave of fatigue surged through Duncan as he watched them carry the man back to the springhouse, then gazed at his hands, which had begun to tremble. It was the first time he had ever cut into a living human being.

As he lowered himself onto the bench by the table, the cowmaid appeared with a jug of cold milk, then with a nervous glance toward the house produced from her apron a piece of bread dipped in precious sugar. As he reached for it, the girl stopped his hand and wiped the blood from it before he ate.

“Do you speak English words?” he asked when he finished.

“Oh, yes. Papa says if his Indians can speak three or four tongues, then we can try two at least.”

On the table Duncan absently rolled the round bullet he had excised in the surgery. “His Indians?”

“It’s why we are here, to christen the Indians.” She cast a worried glance at Duncan. “But you mustn’t think we condone. . ” Her mouth twisted in confusion. “You’re a Ramsey,” she added, as if it were the cause of her sudden discomfort.

“I have an Indian friend as well,” Duncan assured her. Only after the declaration left his tongue did he realize how strange it sounded, though it was perhaps the hundredth time that day he had thought of Conawago, left with the dead at the Chimney Rocks, preparing himself to become one of them.

“I was wondering about the iron on the graves,” Duncan said. “It reminds me of my old country. Is he the one who does it?” he asked, nodding toward the springhouse.

“Different ones come,” the girl said, gazing now at the cemetery. “They usually appear at dawn, smoke a pipe or two with my father, and are gone.”

They spoke of small things. Duncan pointed out a hawk soaring over the field. “Were you here last year when the ghostwalkers arrived?”

The girl shuddered, then silently nodded. “That was the second day, after all the killing. Brought in like captives, with the red-coated soldiers.”

“Major Pike?”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said dreamily. “On his fine white horse. He made sure Miss Ramsey got a bed, and a real dress. One of mine. I was happy to offer it.”

“And Adam Munroe?”

The girl nodded again. “When he arrived he had his hair in braids and animals painted on his skin. I thought he was playacting, like my brothers and I do sometimes among the stumps. Some play the Indians, some play our fine brave soldiers in their red tapestry.”

“Did you ever hear the boy speak?”

“Twice he spoke.”

“Only two times?”

“I mean his tongue was open, then closed, then opened once more before it went numb forever. At first, when he arrived, he wanted to tell everyone about the tribes. Then Miss Ramsey spoke to him after they beat Mr. Munroe, and he was silent.”

Duncan looked up in surprise.

“Poor Mr. Munroe, we pray for his soul. That first night Mr. Munroe and Alex escaped. But the pickets caught them because the boy fell and twisted his ankle. The soldiers dragged them both back and beat Mr. Munroe with sticks, cut off his braids, and scrubbed off his paint with rushes. Miss Ramsey, she spoke in the tribal tongue to the boy, like a mother chastising her son. But weeks later, when the great lord came, Alex talked a lot. They gave him sweets and paid my mother to make new clothes for him. He talked and talked as they made notes. Then one day while they were here, an old ranger came, asking about the men who had died, asking about the traders who come from the north, and Alex stopped again. His tongue has not worked since. My brother says when he gets older you’ll be able to put a harness on him like another ox and he won’t say a word, just mind the gees and haws.”

“An old ranger named Fitch?”

The girl nodded and smiled. “A nice man. He carved a bird for me.”

A figure emerged from the biggest cabin, Reverend Zettlemeyer, holding a Bible. As Duncan rose to follow him toward the springhouse, he pocketed the musket ball and turned back to the freckled girl. “When you playact among the stumps,” he asked, “who wins?”

“Why, the soldiers, of course. Always the soldiers.”

For the second time in a month, he entered a room filled with a woman’s quiet German prayers. But this time the man on the pallet, though asleep, was still alive. He stepped past the Reverend’s wife reading the heavy Bible, and noted for the first time a long bow with a quiver of feathered arrows beside it. He turned over the cartridge belt hanging on the peg above the pallet and froze. The knife was out of the sheaf, the cold blade expertly pressed against the artery of Duncan’s thigh.

“I don’t recollect offering to pay my butcher,” came a dry, rough voice. The Scot was awake, and surprisingly nimble.

Duncan did not release the small leather box on the belt but slowly traced the two digits of its tarnished brass adornment. “The Forty-second saw rough service at Ticonderoga.”

The man did not reply, but did not press the knife when Duncan shifted away, kneeling to inspect his sutures. “You must drink twice as much as usual. One part water, one part milk. Keep a poultice on the incision.” He paused, glancing out the window for the milkmaid. There was another question he should have asked her. How could she know Adam Munroe was dead? He turned back to his patient. “Do not try to walk for a week; then use a crutch. If you open the wound, the flesh could mortify.”

“Right,” the man muttered. “Then ye’ll be back and announce it’s time to saw it off anyway. I know doctors. I leave on the morrow, and I’ll slice anyone who tries to stop me.”