Journey Home Chapter Thirteen

Adam stirred and opened his eyes.  The effort brought on a wave of nausea and made his head throb.  Sick to his stomach, he moaned and lifted a hand to his forehead – only to be surprised when his hand was caught and a woman’s voice urged him to silence.

“You must not make a sound,” she whispered.  “Pa is outside.  We may not be alone.”

“Pa?  Who….” 

“Hush!”  He felt her body lean over his.  They were in a tight confined space.  He had no idea who she was or where he was.  Still, it seemed she had his good in mind. As he lay there in the darkness, Adam cast his mind back, trying to remember what had happened.  He had been in the jail cell with Israel.  There had been the sound of a wolf’s cry.  And then –

The wall had blown in.

“He’s been gone too long,” the woman said as she pulled back.  “I should go – ”

At that moment a pale figure appeared, floating like a ghost in the dark space beyond wherever they were.  As the man crouched and looked in, he whistled softly, “You don’t look so good.”

“I don’t feel so good,” Adam replied.  Then he blinked and asked, “Israel?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  I went part way down the stairs to take a look.  Keller’s men have been here.  In fact, there’s two positioned outside the house now keepin’ watch.”

“But none inside?” the woman asked.

“Nope.  For all the good that’ll do us.  We’re trapped.”

Adam’s gaze went from one to the other.  He could barely see the young woman, but she appeared to have dark hair and was unusually tall.  Returning his gaze to Israel he asked, “Did she call you ‘Pa’?”    

            In spite of their danger, Israel grinned.  “Sure did.  Adam, say hello to your niece, Bekah.  She’s the one who turned you into a fugitive – and nearly blew you into the next world.”

            “Niece?” he repeated.

            Bekah looked chagrined.  “I did not mean for you to be hurt.”  She paused and then addressed her father with a sharp tone, “Did you not read the letter mother sent?  I gave the appointed signal.”

            “Adam, here, he’s a big city lawyer,” Israel laughed.  “I guess that means he don’t ever take anythin’ at face value.”

            “You’re insulting me again,” Adam growled as he pushed himself into a seated position.

            “You’re welcome.”  Israel briefly touched Adam’s shoulder and then rose to his feet and walked to the window.  “You can see the man out front from here.  He’s across the road, keepin’ watch on the front door.”

            Before Adam had time to react, Bekah climbed over him and exited the bolt-hole.  She crossed to her father and knelt by the window.  “One of us will have to draw him off so the others can escape.”

            “You’re forgettin’ the other man out back,” Israel commented quietly.

            “If I run, they will both follow.  That way you….”  She stopped.  “What?  What is it?”

            “You’re doin’ it again.”

            “What?” she asked warily.

            “Actin’ like your life ain’t worth a cent.  Like you have to pay some kind of penance for your brother’s death.”  Israel waited a moment and then added, “You dyin’ won’t bring Squire back.”

            “This isn’t about Squire!” she snapped.

            “It ain’t?  Then why are you here?  Why isn’t White Wolf?”

            “I waited for him and he did not come,” she answered.  “I would not see you die.”

            “Bekah….”

            “Er, excuse me,” Adam called from within the bolt-hole, “I hate to interrupt, but could someone help me out of here?”

            Father and daughter turned toward him.  Israel grinned.  “I figured you’d of sweet-talked the mice into carryin’ you out by now.  Here, let me give you a hand.”

            Adam gripped his old friend’s arm and worked his way onto his knees.  When Israel lifted him, he nearly passed out.  As he was lowered to the floor, he asked, “What…what hit me?”

            “I think it was a brick.  You’ve got a gash a good three inches long across your forehead.  Can you stand?”

            “Let’s give it a try.”  As he spoke, Adam pushed off his friend’s arm and stood under his own power.  “So far, so good.”

            “Can you walk?”

            Adam scowled and then lifted his foot.  For a moment it seemed as if all was well.  Then he brought his foot down and the motion of it striking the floor sent a second wave of nausea crashing through him. 

            Israel caught him before he could fall.

            Looking up, Adam sought his gaze.   “It appears that I should be the decoy.  There’s no way I can run even if we do manage to escape.”

             “There will be no need,” Bekah remarked quietly from nearby the window.

            Her father turned toward her.  “Why is that?”

            She shrugged.  “The man is gone.”

            “What do you mean ‘gone’?” her father asked.

            “Just what I said,” she growled.  “He is no longer there.  Look.  The street is empty.”

            “You see him leave?”

            “No.  Between one heartbeat and the next, he vanished.”

            Israel scratched his head.  “Well, that’s a mite unusual, don’t you think?”

            “Perhaps it is a trick,” Adam offered.  “Perhaps they guess we are here and seek to lure us out.”

            “Maybe.  Or maybe the man just stepped into the woods to relieve himself.”  Israel laughed at his daughter’s expression. “You keep watchin’ while I help your uncle down to the next floor.  Call out if he returns.”

            Bekah nodded once and then turned back to the window.

            Adam found he had to lean heavily on his old friend.  He was out of breath by the time they reached the second floor landing.  Once there, Israel gently lowered him to the floor again.  “Wait here.  Let me see if anythin’ has changed.  I’ll be right back.”

            Lightheaded, Adam leaned back against the wall to wait.  As he recalled the conversation between father and daughter, he scowled.  Had he been out of touch so long with his sister that he had missed the fact that her eldest child had died?  Suddenly the last fifteen years of his life, during which he had worked so hard for the rights of his people, seemed to pale when compared to the loss of that single life he had not known.

            Israel returned and knelt beside him.  “The way’s still clear.  Are you game to go to the next floor and see if we can tell whether the man at the back is gone as well?”

            “Why don’t you leave me here?”

            “You too weak to go?”

            Adam shook his head.  “Too weary.”  Then he sighed.  “Is your eldest really dead?”

            His old friend looked pained.  “Near two years now.”

            “How did it happen?”

            Israel stood and looked up the stairs.  “Only Bekah knows for sure and she ain’t talkin’.  All we know is he was shot by a white man.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            Israel nodded.  “So I am.  He was a good man.”

            “No, I am sorry I did not know.  Sorrier still that I did not know him.  I have been so busy saving the world for the Cherokee.  Dear Lord, how did my sister survive?”

            “You know Sunalei….”  His old friend hesitated.  “Well, maybe you don’t anymore.  She’s strong as the backbone of the mountains.  Adam – Adohi – don’t blame yourself for fightin’ for the rights of your people.  If someone wasn’t willin’ to sacrifice his own happiness and family, then nothin’ would get done.  Say, did you ever get married?”

            “No.”

            “Was there ever…someone?”

            Adam was silent a moment.  “Once.  But she was white.”

            “And you could’nt marry a white woman?  Why ever not?”

            “I wouldn’t marry her.  I have seen what the white world has done to my parents – to you and Sunalei.  I know what it has done to me.  If there is one-hundredth Indian blood in your veins, you are Indian.  I will not subject anyone I love to such hatred and contempt.”  When Israel said nothing, Adam realized what he had said.  “Forgive me.  I didn’t think….”

            “No, my friend.  You think too much. Sometimes you just gotta live and go with the river’s flow.”  Israel laughed as he gripped Adam’s arm.  “So, you comin’ with me or not?  I’d suggest you do, because if it comes to runnin’ like Hell, I’d like you beside me.”

            Adam glanced up the stairs.  “What about Bekah?”

            Israel’s smile widened.  “You notice who she takes after?”

            He hadn’t seen her clearly.  Just the height, the dark hair, and those hazel eyes.  “You?”

            “Heck, no.  Pa.”  Israel caught him under the arm and lifted him up.  “That girl can look out for herself.”

            At the bottom of the steps, Israel left him leaning on the railing and went to look out the back window.  Adam was breathing hard, but he was still on his feet – which he considered no small accomplishment.  He waited a few minutes and when his friend did not reappear, opened his mouth to call out, but stopped short when he sensed movement in the room adjacent to the one they occupied. 

            “Israel,” he called softly, “someone’s here.  Israel….”

            “What?  What is it?” his friend asked as he returned to his side.

            “There.  There’s someone – ”

            Adam stopped.  The figure appeared in the doorway.  In its hands was a gun and it was pointed toward them.  The man stepped forward into the light, brandishing the weapon.

            “Well, well, well…  Too bad I ain’t a portrait painter.  You two should see the looks on your faces,” Curious Dent said as he stepped into the room.

~

             John Johnston stirred and glanced up at the sky.  It was well past noon.  The renegade Indians had bound his hands and then led him on a forced march north for three straight hours.  Hawk had not gone with them.  About a half hour into the journey the unidentified Cherokee and his band had returned and the two leaders had gone off together. 

            He believed, from the way Hawk spoke, that his sons were not far away.  Unfortunately, in a strange land one mile might as well be one hundred.  His boys might be just over the next ridge in a cave by the river that he heard rushing close to hand, or even tied and bound and held in the base of a nearby sycamore.  He had no way of knowing.  As a young man he had been drawn to the west, to its promise of adventure and a bright new beginning, but as he lived the dream, facing untold dangers and dragging the people he loved into them, he came to see it was not as much an adventure as a test.  If a man survived, he became stronger.

            If a man survived….

            He believed Hawk’s threat to kill his boys to be just that – a threat.  The renegade Wyandot knew he would lose all power over him if he harmed either Stephen or Robinson.  But then, that was the way a man capable of seeing reason understood it, and Hawk was not a reasonable or reasoning man. 

He was a rabid animal waiting to feast.

            Turning his eyes back to the earth, John surveyed the Indian camp.  If he was going to try to escape, he would have to make it soon.  All around him, from every direction, Indians were emerging from the trees.  Most so far were Wyandot, but there were Shawano among them and there was that group of Cherokee.  He wondered what Hawk’s lieutenants were telling them about the bound white man in their midst.  He wondered, as well, how many of them he knew.  The Shawano had been in his charge for eight years now.  The Wyandot and Seneca for something close to four.  Their chiefs were good men.  They understood that any further violence on their part would result in the wanton destruction of their people.  John looked at the faces around him.  There was little gray hair among them, and even less wisdom.  For the most part, these were angry young men. 

            Men no more capable of making a rational choice than Hawk.

            As he surveyed the crowd, John noted one man in particular who was watching him.  He had arrived with the Cherokee.  One of the Wyandot’s men had disparagingly identified the group of several dozen men by calling them Hawk’s dogs.  The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties and was dressed elegantly for an Indian.  He wore a dark fashionable suit with a crisp white shirt and the typical black bow tied beneath a raised collar.  Only the beads around his neck and the feathers tucked in his black beaver hat, as well as a smattering of paint on his deeply tanned face, mimicked the native.  He was not full-blooded, but his white blood had very little influence over his features.  Still, the fact that he was part white was a rarity in these proceedings.  John wondered who the man was and why he had been included.  The others in his party seemed to be all Cherokee – especially the great gargantuan who served as a bodyguard for their leader.  The elder Cherokee who led them was nearly as old as Hawk and had a face with the look of a weathered post struck one too many times by a hatchet.

            In his job John had had little intercourse with the Cherokee.  Though there was an occasional one in Ohio, for the most part they had already migrated to the south.  He admired their chiefs who had done as much as was humanly possible for their people; causing them to adapt better than any other tribe.  But he pitied them as well.  The climate of the country was explosive.  Since General Jackson’s win in New Orleans and the idolatry that victory engendered, the men who called themselves Democrats were rising to power.  Most of them hated the Indian, and they saw the Cherokee as the worst among the tribes for their pretensions to be white.

            The poor Indian simply could not win.

            The man in the dark suit inclined his head, seeming to excuse himself, and then stepped into the nearby trees – perhaps to seek relief.  John turned his attention to the other members of his party.  For the most part, with the exception of their leader and his strong arm, they appeared to have intelligent faces.  Perhaps he need not fear Hawk’s plan.  Perhaps these men – red men whom he respected – would listen, and then have the wisdom to reject the Wyandot’s insane plan.  Maybe the Indian would put a stop to Hawk’s War on his own.

            “A-ye-ga-li,” a voice whispered close behind him.  “Say nothing.”

            John stiffened, and did as he was told.  A second later he felt a knife slip between his wrists.

            “Be quick and quiet,” his rescuer whispered.  “Go.”

            “Hawk has my sons,” John answered.

            “No.  They have escaped.”  The man released the knife, burying its blade in the earth.  “I must go now.  You must do the same!”

            “But this war….” 

            John waited a moment and then pivoted to look.  The woods behind him were empty.  Turning back, he focused his eyes on the camp just in time to see the man in the dark suit emerge.  The Cherokee did not glance his way, but went to join the others of his tribe.  John gripped the hilt of the knife with his fingers and held it, relishing the reality of its cool touch.  Still, he hesitated.  Now that he knew his sons were free, was it wisdom to go?  Was there not, perhaps, something he could do to prevent this war?  To keep the ground of Kentucky and Ohio from once again becoming dark with innocent blood – both white and red?

            As he sat there thinking, John felt eyes on him again and looked up to find the native in the dark suit watching.  There was something about the man that went beyond the average; something in his bearing and breeding that marked him for greatness.  John wondered once again just who he was even as he released the knife and left it buried in the ground where he could reach it.

            Before he left, he would just see if he couldn’t prevent that war.

~

           Adam took back everything he had said about the crazy old innkeeper – well, almost everything.  Curius Dentatus Cincinnatus Jones was crazy.

            But then again, maybe they all were.

            He leaned heavily on the old man as Israel led the way through the darkening trees.  In the time it had taken them to scout out the area around the inn and leave it, the sun had set and a chill wind blown in with a hint of rain that promised more before the night was out.  Adam was already out of breath and they had only traveled a half mile at most.  He feared he had a concussion but then, even if he did, there was really nothing to be done about it.  The townspeople were unlikely to hold off hunting them until he had time to recover. 

            “You okay, son?” Dent asked as he directed him under yet another sloping branch.

            Adam grunted, unwilling to expend any unnecessary energy.  They were making for a hiding place deep in the forest near the waterfall; one Israel and his band had long used.  His sister waited for them there, eager to see him and to hold her husband once again.  Glancing forward he saw his brother-in-law’s long lean form.  Israel was moving ahead of them, making certain the way was clear.  So far, from behind they had only heard shouts.  Unless the white men were traveling through the trees without light, they had not yet begun their pursuit.

            The white men.  How things changed.  Adam found he was thinking as if he was not one among them; as if he had not lived as a white man for the last 15 years.  As if he had not almost married a white woman. 

            Her name had been Elizabeth, but he had called her Bess.  They had met when her father had taken him on as a law clerk.  At the time Bess had been hardly more than a girl.  Philadelphia had a fascination with Indians and the west and when he had first gone there, as a young man of twenty-five or so, he had been looked on as a curiosity – like an exotic object from a far distant land.  Bess had often come to her father’s office, sometimes to see her beloved papa and other times to talk to him.  They were friends, and he never thought they would be anything more.

            After his apprenticeship with Owen Cadwalder, Adam had moved on, taking the knowledge he had gained and returning west to help his father’s people.  In time he had forgotten about Bess – or if he had not completely forgotten, he had filed her away with missed chances and lost opportunities.

            Then one day he had been called on to defend a white man accused of killing another white man who had killed an Indian.  He had been living in Pennsylvania then.  The Indian had been an old man, one of the last left in the east.  A white man had beaten him for no reason and left him to die.  A neighbor of the old Indian, incensed by the other man’s brutality, had gone to confront him.  There had been a fight.  The Indian’s murderer had been shot – the other man said by accident.

            Someone had suggested he – Adam – represent the accused.  No doubt, it was an enemy.  A white man, accused of killing one of his own kind who had rid God’s earth of one of the Godless heathen, defended by another Indian?

            The man accused turned out to be Bess’s husband.

            She had grown into a beauty; tall and willowy.  In some ways she reminded him of his mother, but Bess – though she was pale and golden-haired like Miriam Fox – was flax pulled out slow and spun into one long golden thread.  Bess was twenty-five now and a mother of two.

            And soon to be a widow.

            The trial went well.  He was winning the case.  Then, someone took it out of his hands.  The sheriff said he found Matthew Jensen hanging in his cell and that the guilty man had taken his own life.

            They would never know if that was the truth.

            Bess had been strong.  She had to be, she said, for her children.  But in her strength she found weakness enough to lean on him.  Days passed.  Months.  And through those months they grew closer.  Adam wanted to find the men who had killed her husband and to punish them, but she forbade it, saying she didn’t want to lose him too.

            But in the end she did, not to hatred, but to love.

            He loved Bess with all his heart and so, he couldn’t marry her.  Every time they walked down the street together – each time they passed someone they didn’t know – he saw the looks, the down-turned lips and disapproving eyes.

            The hatred.

            It was one thing to gawk at an Indian like he was something in a freak show.  It was another thing entirely to think of bedding one.

            Maybe he was a coward.  His mother and father had managed to survive.  All of their four children were living and doing well – at least as well as a half-breed child could do.  He had chosen the white way, as had his sister Talia who was married now and lived as a white woman in the east.  Sunalei, of course, had married Israel Boone and still lived among a remnant band of natives of mixed tribes.  His younger brother, Toby, in spite of being named and brought up as a white, had chosen to return to their father’s people.  He hadn’t seen Toby in over 20 years.  He doubted he would even recognize him.

            Adam’s sigh was deep enough to draw Curious Dent’s attention.  “Something eating at you, son?” the older man asked.

            After a moment he answered, “I’m just weary, that’s all.”

            “Adam!  Dent!”  Israel called as he came running back toward them.  “Take cover!  Someone’s coming!”

            “Any idea who it is?” Dent answered.  “Friend or foe?”

            “Well, now, I’d say that depends on just whose side you three are on,” a new voice drawled as a long lanky form stepped out of the trees and aged hands raised a brightly polished weapon and pointed it at them.  Snow white hair topped the mountain of a man who stood more than six feet tall – about an inch or two more than Israel who had stopped and was staring at him, his mouth agape.

            The man turned his eyes on him.  A lop-sided grin lifted the corner of his lips.  In an easy loping way he said, “You got something you want to say….son….

            “Son?”

            Adam felt Curious Dent flinch as the truth struck him as well.

            It was Daniel Boone.