Ken Follett - A Place Called Freedom (1995)

He was so scared he could not make a sound. It was a peculiar face, young but alien, and he realized after a few moments that it belonged to an Indian.

The face was smiling, but not at Jay. Jay followed the gaze and saw that it was focused on Peg. She was making faces at the Indian, and after a minute Jay figured that she was trying to get him to untie her.

Jay lay dead still and watched.

There were two Indians, he saw. They were young boys.

One of them stepped silently into the circle. He was carrying a big fish. He put it gently down on the ground, then drew a knife and bent over Peg.

Lennox was as quick as a snake. Jay hardly saw what happened. There was a blur of movement and Lennox had the boy in an armlock. The knife fell to the ground. Peg gave a cry of disappointment.

The second Indian vanished.

Jay stood up. “What have we here?”

Dobbs rubbed his eyes and stared. “Just an Indian boy, trying to rob us. We should hang him as a lesson to the others.”

“Not yet,” said Lennox. “He may have seen the people we’re after.”

That thought lifted Jay’s hopes. He stood in front of the boy. “Say something, savage.”

Lennox twisted the boy’s arm harder. He cried out and protested in his own language. “Speak English,” Lennox barked.

“Listen to me,” Jay said loudly. “Have you seen two people, a man and a woman, on this road?”

“No trade today,” the boy said.

“He does speak English!” Dobbs said.

“I don’t think he can tell us anything, though,” Jay said dispiritedly.

“Oh, yes he can,” Lennox said. “Hold him for me, Dobbo.” Dobbs took over and Lennox picked up the knife the Indian had dropped. “Look at this. It’s one of ours—it has the letter T burned into the handle.”

Jay looked. It was true. The knife had been made at his plantation! “Why, then he must have met Lizzie!”

Lennox said: “Exactly.”

Jay felt hopeful again.

Lennox held the knife in front of the Indian’s eyes and said: “Which way did they go, boy?”

He struggled, but Dobbs held him tight. “No trade today,” he said in a terrified voice.

Lennox took the boy’s left hand. He hooked the point of the knife under the nail of the index finger. “Which way?” he said, and he pulled out the nail.

The boy and Peg screamed at the same time.

“Stop it!” Peg yelled. “Leave him alone!”

Lennox pulled out another fingernail. The boy began to sob.

“Which way to the pass?” Lennox said.

“Pass,” the boy said, and with a bleeding hand he pointed north.

Jay gave a sigh of satisfaction. “You can take us there,” he said.

42

MACK DREAMED HE WAS WADING ACROSS A RIVER TO A place called Freedom. The water was cold, the river bottom was uneven and there was a strong current. He kept striding forward but the bank never got any closer, and the river became deeper with every stride. All the same he knew that if he could just keep going he would eventually get there. But the water got deeper and deeper, and eventually it closed over his head.

Gasping for breath, he woke up.

He heard one of the horses whinny.

“Something’s disturbed them,” he said. There was no reply. He turned over and saw that Lizzie was not beside him.

Perhaps she had gone to answer a call of nature behind a bush, but he had a bad feeling. He rolled quickly out of his blanket and stood up.

The sky was streaked with gray and he could see the four mares and two stallions, all standing still, as if they had heard other horses in the distance. Someone was coming.

“Lizzie!” he called.

Then Jay stepped from behind a tree with a rifle pointed at Mack’s heart.

Mack froze.

A moment later Sidney Lennox appeared with a pistol in each hand.

Mack stood there helpless. Despair engulfed him like the river in his dream. He had not escaped after all: they had caught him.

But where was Lizzie?

The one-eyed man from South River ford, Deadeye Dobbs, rode up, also carrying a rifle, with Peg on another horse beside him, her feet tied together under the horse’s belly so she could not get off. She did not seem to be injured, but she looked suicidally miserable and Mack knew she blamed herself for this. Fish Boy was walking alongside Dobbs’s horse, tied by a long rope to Dobbs’s saddle. He must have led them here. His hands were covered with blood. For a moment Mack was mystified: the boy had shown no sign of injury before. Then he realized that he had been tortured. He felt a wave of disgust for Jay and Lennox.

Jay was staring at the blankets on the ground. It was obvious that Mack and Lizzie had been sleeping together. “You filthy pig,” he said, his face working with rage. “Where’s my wife?” He reversed his rifle and swung the butt at Mack’s head, hitting him a bone-crunching blow to the side of the face. Mack staggered and fell. “Where is she, you coal-mining animal, where’s my wife?”

Mack tasted blood. “I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know I might as well have the satisfaction of shooting you through the head!”

Mack realized Jay meant it. Sweat broke out all over him. He felt the impulse to beg for his life but he clamped his teeth together.

Peg screamed: “No—don’t shoot—please!”

Jay pointed the rifle at Mack’s head. His voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “This is for all the times you’ve defied me!” he screamed.

Mack looked into his face and saw murder in his eyes.

Lizzie lay belly down on a grassy tuft behind a rock, with her rifle in her hand, waiting.

She had picked her spot the night before, after inspecting the riverbank and seeing the footprints and droppings of deer. As the light strengthened she watched, lying dead still, waiting for the animals to come to drink.

Her skill with a rifle was going to keep them alive, she reckoned. Mack could build a house and clear fields and sow seed, but it would be at least a year before they could grow enough to last them through a winter. However, there were three big sacks of salt among their supplies. Lizzie had often sat in the kitchen of High Glen House watching Jeannie, the cook, salting hams and haunches of venison in big barrels. She knew how to smoke fish, too. They would need plenty: the way she and Mack were behaving, there would be three to feed before a year passed. She smiled happily.

There was a movement in the trees. A moment later a young deer came out of the woods and stepped daintily to the water’s edge. Bending its head, it stuck out its tongue and began to drink.

Lizzie cocked the flintlock of her rifle silently.

Before she could aim, another deer followed the first, and within a few moments there were twelve or fifteen of them. If all the wilderness is like this, Lizzie thought, we’ll grow fat!

She did not want a big deer. The horses were fully loaded and could not carry spare meat, and anyway the younger animals were more tender. She picked her target and took aim, pointing the rifle at its shoulder just over the heart. She breathed evenly and made herself still, the way she had learned back in Scotiand.

As always, she suffered a moment of regret for the beautiful animal she was about to destroy.

Then she pulled the trigger.

The shot came from farther up the valley, two or three hundred yards away.

Jay froze, his gun still pointed at Mack.

The horses started, but the shot was too distant to give them a serious scare.

Dobbs brought his mount under control then drawled: “If you shoot now, Jamisson, you’ll warn her and she could get away.”

Jay hesitated, then slowly lowered his gun.

Mack sagged with relief.

Jay said: “I’ll go after her. The rest of you stay here.”