Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Woolford laid the blanket beside the dead man and motioned Duncan to his side. They silently laid the body on the blanket and carried him to the stream. When they had finished washing the body, Duncan extracted the ranger badge from his pocket and handed it to Woolford. “You probably saved my life with this.”

“There are accounts to balance.” The ranger made no effort to accept the badge.

“Accounts?”

“You buried Fitch.”

“As any good Christian would have.” He searched Woolford’s face, which had gone cloudy. “Say what you mean, Captain. You are thinking of Adam and his wife.”

Woolford looked away. “I knew her. A lot like Sarah, only happy. Always a song in her eyes, yet wise about many things.”

“I saw her run with Alex that day at the mission, but I made the mistake of following them on the same trail. The infantrymen crossed the ridge and got there first. I arrived but a minute too late. They had already. . I stood over her body and ordered them away.”

Woolford washed the dead man’s arm for the third time.

“Already what?”

“Like Alex said. They had business.”

Duncan closed his eyes a moment as he finally understood. “They scalped her,” he whispered after a moment. “But the army is prohibited.”

“We’re a long way from headquarters. There’s always someone with money for scalps. Trappers move between here and Canada. I caught one last year with twenty-five scalps hidden between his beaver skins. More of it goes on than ever before. Fitch and I swore if we ever found the one who opened those purse strings, we’d fill his throat with coins until he could breathe no more. It was what Fitch had been doing while I was gone to Europe, trying to track those who paid for hair, back along the trails to Canada.” Woolford looked down at Duncan’s hand, which still clasped the badge. “Keep it.”

“I will not serve the king,” Duncan insisted.

“The ocean is wide, the king is far away.”

“The king is as close as Lord Ramsey.”

Woolford winced, then stared into the face of the dead man, as if consulting him. He glanced back at the cabin, reached to his belt, and produced his knife, extending it to Duncan hilt first. “Like you announced once, you are a wondrous doctor to the dead,” the ranger said as he lifted one side of the blanket, obscuring the view from the direction of Conawago and the woman.

“I don’t follow.”

“The wounds. I want to know what caused them. Do it,” he insisted as he saw the hesitation in Duncan’s eyes. “Then we’ll wrap him tight in the blanket and dig a hole. He would have wanted a Christian burial. We’ll have to make a marker.”

Duncan slowly closed his fingers around the hilt, then knelt at the stream, slapping the cool water over his face before beginning the grisly work. In ten minutes’ time he had produced two round musket balls. The other wounds had been stabs from short blades. Duncan washed the bullets off and handed them to Woolford, who gazed at them grimly before stashing them in his pocket.

They buried the man on a knoll under a tall sycamore. Duncan had begun a second grave when Woolford stopped him with a hand on his arm, gesturing toward the tree where the man with the arrow had died. The body was gone.

Duncan trotted to the tree in alarm. He could understand enough of the signs on the ground to see that the body had been dragged to the river by someone in moccasins coming from the homestead. Conawago. Conawago had dumped the body in the river while Duncan and Woolford had been digging the grave.

He asked no questions when they gathered at the grave. When no one offered words, Conawago spoke, first in a native tongue that Woolford did not seem to understand, then switching to English, solemnly reciting a Psalm. Duncan gazed at him in surprise, then remembered that the old Indian had long ago been educated by Jesuits. Alex stood beside the grief-stricken woman, holding her hand, showing no emotion as Duncan and Woolford began closing the grave, standing there with the Indian woman until they had finished. When she finally turned from the grave, she walked deliberately toward the ruined cabin. They followed and helped her pry up a charred floorboard, from under which she retrieved a long object wrapped in leather. She unrolled the wrapping to reveal a well-used hunting rifle, with a powder horn carved with deer. She spoke to Conawago, who shook his head, then she pressed, her insistent tone unmistakable, though Duncan knew not the words that were spoken.

When Conawago at last accepted the rifle, Woolford turned to Duncan. “She says the world is upside down. She says she could not bear for Conawago to be buried this season as well.”

Alex helped the woman gather her few surviving possessions into a blanket, which he slung onto his shoulder, and then the two began walking across the field. When Duncan grabbed his own pack, Conawago put a restraining hand on his arm.

“They have a different path to take,” he said.

Duncan looked in confusion from the old Indian to the boy. “But Alex. . all those years a prisoner. Surely we can’t just let him think he’s a slave again. We must. . ”

“God’s breath!” Woolford snapped. “After all this, you cannot see? His nightmares aren’t caused by all those years with the Indians. To his mind, he only became a prisoner when he was taken by Europeans.”

Duncan looked from the ranger to Conawago, both of whom gazed at him; perplexed, he looked down at the earth, at his feet, with unexpected shame. He was a fool to think he was progressing toward the truth. All he ever found was more confusion.

“Do you think he suffers from anything you and I do not?” Woolford asked in a forgiving tone.

“What are you saying?”

“His days spent with Arnold and Ramsey at the mission. You asked once when the Company was started. That’s when.”

“At the mission? But that was where Alex explained the Iroquois to them, tried to explain their trade routes, their concept of religion, how the shamans were the lifeblood of their people, how. . ”

“Exactly,” Woolford interrupted, as if Duncan need say no more. The ranger turned, retrieved his pack and rifle, and began jogging back up the trail.

They moved in silence, Duncan’s companions so wary now that he retrieved a heavy piece of wood from the forest floor to defend himself. As they climbed the final mountain before their destination, Conawago and Woolford stopped running. They acted as though they were stalking game now, crouching, moving in perfect silence, keeping Duncan between them. Once, in the distance, there was a cracking sound. It could have been a tree snapping in a gust. It could have been a rifle shot.

Woolford signaled for a halt and sat on a rock under a hemlock, as if waiting. Conawago, seeming to sense something as well, crouched beside a boulder twenty feet away. After several minutes, a man in a fringed linen hunter’s frock and green leggings materialized from behind a tree a hundred feet away, running toward the north until Woolford gave a soft warbling whistle.

The leathery-faced man offered a broad smile to Conawago, eyed Duncan suspiciously, then hastily reported to his captain. Woolford’s face tightened as he read a slip of paper handed him by the ranger. He handed it to Duncan. “Never have I met a man who made friends so quickly,” he said.

The note was in French. It offered a princely sum for the scalp of Duncan McCallum.

“The corporal says some of the Ramseys mixed it up with that party of Hurons,” Woolford reported after a moment. “He came across two of them running through the woods, the Hurons tracking them, not far behind. One with a beard that’s red and gray, with another half his age.” He turned to Duncan with question in his eyes. The ranger was asking if the men were worth saving.