William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

“Smart thinking, lass,” another man said. “Damn filthy savages.”

The men all swung down from their saddles and looked at the pair.

“They dyed Jamie’s hair with coloring from plants,” Hannah told the men.

“Sure did,” another man spoke. “You can see the blond roots.”

“After Jamie faced down a pack of wolves...”

“Faced down a pack of wolves!” yet another man said, clearly startled.

“Yes,” Hannah said quickly. “The boy was hunting and became separated from his guards. He was only nine years old and had killed a huge deer with the bow and arrows he’d made. The wolves were about to fight him for the meat” — Jamie struggled to keep a straight face, but it was done only with a lot of effort — “and he grabbed one by the throat and stared it down. The animal clawed him fiercely but Jamie refused to drop his eyes. Jamie and this huge wolf stayed that way for several minutes, as the other wolves became afraid.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “Finally, Jamie threw the big wolf from him and all the wolves ran away. Look!” She opened Jamie’s shirt, exposing the long scar.

“Would you look at that?” a young man exclaimed. “What a fearsome mark the beast left on you, boy.”

“And after that,” Hannah continued. “Jamie was called Man Who Is Not Afraid. The Shawnees sang songs about his bravery and danced in his honor.” She put her arm around Jamie’s shoulders. “He saved my life, and I shall forever be in his debt.”

Jamie decided to change the subject before the manure got too deep. “Where are we, if I may ask?”

“Why, you’re in Kentucky, lad. And you and the lady here are safe. Come on, the both of you. Let’s get you out of them savage’s clothes and into a tub of hot soapy water. How does that sound.”

“As near to heaven as I might ever get,” Hannah said.

And the men laughed. All but one.

Three

Jamie and Hannah had traveled many more miles than they thought. They had come about a hundred and seventy-five miles from the Shawnee town on the river.

“You must have gone right by a dozen or more settlements,” Reverend Hugh Callaway told them. “Why, the country is filling up fast, I tell you.”

“Tall Bull’s band is one of the last real holdouts in this area,” a farmer named Mason said. He leaned forward. “Lad, what are you going to do? Will you seek to find relatives up yonder whence you came?”

Jamie shook his head, conscious of Hannah’s eyes on him. “No, sir. I think not. I had no kin there. Just Pa and Ma and the baby. They’re all dead. I see no reason to go back.”

The men looked at one another. Callaway said, “Then what do you intend to do, lad?”

Jamie met the reverend’s gaze with one of his own. “Survive, sir. I’m really very good at it.”

“But where, lad?” Mason asked.

“In the woods, if I have to.”

“But you’re only a child!” the reverend’s wife said. “You can’t live out in the woods in a cave like a sav — ” She bit the words off.

“Like a savage Indian, mum?” Jamie said that with a smile. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. I learned a lot from the Shawnees.”

“From a filthy pack of red niggers?” another man spoke up. A man that Jamie had taken an instant dislike to back on the road.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Jamie said. “But this band of Shawnee bathed regularly. They make their own soap, just like we do.”

“Sounds to me like you’re defendin’ them savages,” the man said angrily.

“Now, calm down, John Jackson,” the reverend said. “You’ve no call to address the boy in such a manner.”

“How do we know that both the boy and the wench ain’t spies for the red devils?” Jackson demanded. “I say we banish them both from town.”

“I say nay to that!” a merchant man named Abe Caney spoke up. “John, you’ve no right to accuse these people of any wrongdoing. They’ve been put through enough without adding false charges from you.”

The others in the meeting room were quick to agree with Caney. John Jackson stood up, jerked his hat from the peg, and stormed out into the late afternoon.

“Pay the man no heed,” Mason said. “He’s an ill-tempered man but a good man in his own way. We’ve all fought the savages and John will stand with the best of them.”

“Aye,” Caney said. “And he’ll be the first to help with the building of a cabin.” He smiled. “Although he does grouse about it the whole time.”

“My child,” the Reverend Callaway said, speaking to Hannah, who was anything but a child, with a well-rounded figure and full bosom. The only thing the ladies of that time would object to were her tanned cheeks and arms. But that would be the case in the cities, not on the frontier, where women usually worked alongside their men in the fields. “Have you given thought as to the rest of your life now that you are free from the hostiles?”

Hannah smiled. “My life was interrupted at age fourteen, Reverend Callaway. I’m afraid I haven’t been free long enough to do much thinking about the rest of it.”

“Of course, of course!” He patted her hand. “Well, you can stay with us for a time, and Jamie, a young couple will be along shortly to fetch you to their home. They’re a lovely Christian couple without children and they were delighted when I sent a boy riding to their farm with news about you.”

Jamie nodded his head. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“You’ll not be needing that bow and quiver of arrows now, Jamie,” Mason said.

“I’ll keep them,” Jamie replied. He smiled. “As souvenirs.”

* * *

Sam and Sarah Montgomery were a nice young couple, and Jamie found himself liking them from the start. They were amazed at Jamie’s size, expecting to see a small boy of eleven, not this strong and quite capable appearing young man who, despite his young age, exuded strength and quiet confidence.

After supper at the Callaway home, on the wagon ride back to their farm that evening, Sam asked, “Do you have much knowledge of the fields, Jamie?”

“I helped Pa when I was little, yes, sir. And I had a section of the garden that was mine.”

“Wonderful. I’m in the process of clearing land to raise more crops.”

“I haven’t had much experience with an axe, sir,” Jamie said dryly.

Sam cut his eyes to the boy/man sitting between he and his wife. Jamie had a sense of humor, Sam discovered. But he doubted the boy rarely let it show. Probably wasn’t much to laugh about while a slave in a Shawnee town. “I imagine that’s true, Jamie,” he replied.

Jamie knew why the quick glance. “Indians have a good sense of humor, Mr. Montgomery,” Jamie said. “They just don’t show it much around people not of their kind.”

Sam started to say that the only good he’d ever found about Indians was when they were dead. But he held his tongue. There were dozens, hundreds, of questions the couple wanted to ask Jamie, but they did not know how or where to begin.

“You live a long way out of town,” Jamie observed, after a few moments of silence.

“We have a little settlement out here,” Sarah said. “About a dozen families live within a two- or three-mile radius of one another. There are enough children that we now have our own school. I do some of the teaching.”

“I could read and write some when Tall Bull took me. I think I’ve forgotten how.”

“It’ll come back to you in jig-time,” Sam said. “We won’t push you, Jamie. You’ve got a lot of adjusting ahead of you.” Like learning how to wear shoes again, he thought. Jamie wore his moccasins; said the shoes he’d received hurt his feet.

“Do the Indians bother you out here?”