Journey Home Chapter Fourteen

Danny Moray lifted his head as far as he could –  which wasn’t far.  He looked around seeking his captors but, for the moment, they were all out of sight.  After being separated from the Johnston boys, he had been forced by Hawk’s men to march several miles north at a quick and exhausting pace.  Once they arrived he had been stripped of everything but his pants and boots, gagged, and strapped to stakes driven into the ground.  A band of rawhide circled his throat making it hard to breathe.  It had been soaked before being applied and he knew on the morrow – with the advent of the sun – it would grow tight, eventually choking him.  Hawk had threatened to kill him before the next sunset.  This was part of that, but it was also something else.  It was a trap.

Set for his father.

Hawk’s current efforts in Kentucky were two-fold.  First, he was drawing together hundreds of Indians – for the most part full-bloods –  planning to begin a war to end all wars on the frontier.  The renegade Wyandot intended to accomplish what Tecumseh and his brother had only dreamed of – to drive all white men from the lands that had once belonged to the Indian.  It seemed a mad scheme in 1820, but Danny had learned that Hawk had an ace in the hole –  Stephen and Robinson Johnston’s father.  Apparently John Johnston carried enough weight among the tribes that a word from him calling them to action would be all it would take.

Or so the renegade believed.

Secondly, Hawk had come to avenge his son’s death and to claim recompense.  Since the Jimsons were already dead, his only recourse was to seek out the men who had aided the white couple in taking Little Bear from him – his father and Daniel Boone.

Hawk had explained to the newly arrived Cherokee leader how he had orchestrated Israel Boone’s capture.  One of the men in Whitehair’s camp was an agent of the renegade Wyandot.  He had led Simon Keller and his men to the scene.  In a twist of irony, the man had later been killed by the mob pursuing Daniel Boone’s son.

Danny swallowed against the rawhide and choked down his chagrin.  Hawk had also explained how he had made him – Mingo’s son – his captive, and the renegade had laughed heartily as he did.  Hawk and his men had stalked him, but his own stupidity led to his capture.  He had simply wandered too far away from the others in his party.  

After binding him and staking him to the ground, Hawk’s men had retreated into the trees.  With merciless glee one of them had explained to him that they did not intend to kill his father outright.  They would take him, and then force Mingo to watch as his son died a slow death of thirst and exposure.  Once his father had been swift as the deer and sharp as the eagle’s talons.  Such a plan would have not fooled him.  But now, Mingo was an old man and many years had passed since he had been confronted by such savage human wolves.  He feared that, out of concern for him, his father would fall easily into Hawk’s trap.  Danny didn’t know which would be worse if he did – his father watching him die, or him watching his father’s pain as he died.

Danny closed his eyes and sought to find his center as his father had taught him.  He fought to quiet the fear that pushed him to the edge of panic, and to dampen the voice of despair that threatened to drive him mad.  Neither would do him any good.  He practiced taking deeper breaths and was rewarded when the muscles in his neck relaxed and the bite of the rawhide grew less painful.  Then, as he had seen his father do many times, he reached out in spirit to warn the old man he loved more dearly than life.

Father.  Stay away!  It is a trap.  Father, can you hear me?

His mother had smiled the first time she found the two of them in a make-shift sweat lodge on the edge of their Scottish property doing this very thing.  What his father called ‘walking in the spirit’, his mother had labeled ‘prayer’.  It mattered little to him what it was called, just so long as it worked.

Father.  Hear me.

There was a rustling of leaves close by.  Then, the sound of twigs underfoot.  Danny opened his eyes and lifted his head only to find a tall and erect man with long silver hair wearing a pair of red-striped pants stepping recklessly out of the trees. 

No!  Danny screamed silently.  No, Father!  Stay away!

Even if the older man had been able to hear his warning, it was too late.  From his vantage point on the ground Danny watched as a second form emerged from the trees – one with deeply tanned skin, whose blue uniform coat was decorated with shells and beads.  The warrior was fitted for battle.  Weapons hung from twin sashes he wore strapped over his muscled chest.

And in the warrior’s hands was a rifle, raised and pointed at his father’s back.

~

Rachel Moray was standing with a kettle of boiling water in her hand, preparing to pour it into a pot and then immerse the silver tea infuser she held.  She was tired after a very sleepless night.  After she and Raeanne had completed their prayers, they had walked up the stair arm in arm, and then gone to their separate sleeping quarters on opposite sides of the Wildwood Inn.  It had not been more than an hour before she heard the wail of a child far too old to cry in such a fashion, and then Raeanne’s soft voice seeking to soothe her.  Her mother’s instincts roused, Rachel found it hard to sleep.  After tossing and turning and sleeping in snatches, she had risen again and gone downstairs to read.  Her husband had lately obtained for her a most interesting volume by Mary Wollstonecraft entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which the author argued that women were in no way inferior to men, but only appeared to be so due to their lack of education.  Written in 1792, several decades later the treatise was slowly making its way west, scandalizing the nation as it did.  Mingo had remarked, of course, when handing it to her with a kiss, that his people had adopted all of its tenets long ago.

And he was right, of course.

Rachel tipped the kettle and watched as a steady stream of water entered the china pot and a slightly less steady ribbon of steam rose into the chill morning air.  She could not help but wonder where her husband was – and her son.  She was worried about them and her friends, both old and new.  Mingo had said little to her, but this man Hawk was a devil from all she could tell; unscrupulous and capable of anything.  Rachel paused in pouring to glance back up the stair.  At least her son was an adult and able to take care of himself.  Poor Raeanne!  Imagine having two boys in that villain’s hands.

Rachel tipped the kettle again and then jumped, spilling its boiling hot contents on the tabletop as the door of the Wild Wood Inn burst open and the rising wind outside blew in a ragged looking trio.  She immediately recognized the two adult men as Steel Coat and Archekatauh or Earth.  They were part of White Wolf’s party who had been there before and gone to search for her boys.  So the young man hanging between them, his face contorted in obvious pain had to be –

“Stephen!” a shout of incredulous joy came from the top of the stairs.

Rachel pivoted to find Raeanne.  She was still in her chemise and had hastily tossed a shawl about her shoulders.  The sound of the door slamming against the wall must have awakened her.  As she watched, Stephen Johnston’s mother literally flew down the stairs and stopped only when her son was safely in her arms.

The two Indian men stepped away, allowing her embrace to support him.  Neither said anything.

Rachel could tell from their faces that something was wrong.

Stephen looked to be about sixteen.  He reminded Rachel in many ways of her own lost child.  The eldest Johnston boy was tall for his age; a strong, hearty boy, with golden blond hair like wheat dipped in honey.  He must have resembled his father, for there was very little of Raeanne in him except perhaps about the eyes, which were large and a light disarming gray.

Eyes that were in torment.

“Ma,” he said, his voice breaking on just that one syllable.  “Ma, I lost him….”

Rachel watched every muscle in Raeanne’s slight form go rigid.  “Lost?” she asked, pulling back.

Stephen shuddered and almost fell, but when she offered to support him, he shook his head and refused.  The young man drew a deep breath, tried, but couldn’t find his voice, and then said, “Robinson’s gone.”

            Rachel knew what her new friend was feeling.  Confusion.  Disbelief.  Sinking fear and the horror only a mother can know.  And the pain she felt was not for one son, but for two.

            “Gone…?” she squeaked at last.   

“I wasn’t good enough!” Stephen exclaimed, tears rolling down his soiled and bloody cheeks.  “I tried, Ma, but I just couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t keep hold of him – keep him in my sight.  I….”  The youth’s head sunk to his chest.  “I let you and Pa down.”

A dark-skinned hand appeared on his shoulder.  Rachel looked up to find one of his Indian escort had stepped forward.  “The boy is too hard on himself,” Earth said.  “He is hurt.  In spite of that, he did his best to keep his brother safe.”  Earth paused.  His eyes were haunted.  “It was not Wisakatchekwa’s will.”

She had noticed the blood on Stephen’s face, but had not thought to look down.  As Rachel lowered her eyes she saw that the young man’s pants were solid crimson, and that beneath the tattered cloth, Stephen’s leg had been hastily bandaged.

It was good thing she hadn’t lost all of the hot water in her kettle.

“Stephen!” his mother breathed as she saw it too.         

            When the young man said nothing, Earth continued, “Your sons escaped Hawk’s men.  When the way of escape was cut off, Stephen chanced death rather than be taken again.  He will be a great man.”

            Raeanne, if possible, had grown paler.  “What?”

            “No, Ma.  I just….  Well, there was no other way.  I took hold of Robinson and we jumped.”  Stephen swallowed and suddenly looked a little green.  “There wasn’t any other way.  I held him tight so he wouldn’t be hurt, but I came down on my leg – ”

            “The bone is through the skin,” Steel Coat announced.

            Now that Stephen was talking, it seemed he couldn’t stop.  “We kept moving, in case the Indians knew how to get down to where we were.  I wanted to keep going, but Robinson, well, he insisted on making a poultice like Black Hoof had taught him back home.  He went to the river carrying one of my boots to put moss in, and….” 
            Now, the boy was decidedly green.

            “And?” his mother asked, her hand touching her throat.

            Steel Coat stepped forward and held out a single brown boot.  There were traces still of mud and river moss clinging to its side.

            “The Kentucky has taken him,” he said.

###

            Danny strained with all of his might against the bonds that held him.  His father had walked straight into Hawk’s trap!  How could the older man have been so careless?  That must have been him he heard, stepping on the branch and moving noisily through the trees.  What he feared had happened – his father had lost his edge, and now it was going to cost both their lives.

            Working the gag between his teeth Danny struggled to make some sort of sound, but was silenced by surprise as his father suddenly pitched forward onto the ground.  Panic seized him.  Had the threat been too much?  Had his father’s heart suddenly given out?

What was happening?

A second later he began to understand as the warrior who trailed behind his father dropped to one knee and opened fire, directing his shot into the trees just above Danny’s head.  As he heard a scream, Danny twisted in the same direction – just in time to see the second of Hawk’s men fall to a glistening blade drawn silently and with deadly precision across his deeply tanned throat.

The kneeling man gave a signal and then bounded into the trees to join his companion.  At the same moment – thanks be to the Creator! – his father sat up and, after dusting himself off, greeted him with a broad smile.

“Daniel,” Mingo said calmly, as if they were at the supper table and he was still a little boy, “I did not intend for you to take so seriously my suggestion that you follow in your namesake’s footsteps.”  Then, with tears in his eyes, his father moved to his side and placed a trembling hand on his arm.  “You are safe, my son,” he sighed.  “All of my prayers are answered.”

~

            A half hour later, still feeling like a fool – and like that little boy he had been – Danny found himself wrapped in a warm woolen blanket, sitting across a small fire from the man he had dared to consider too ‘old’ to rescue him.  Danny told his father and his companions, White Wolf and Comes Flying, all he knew of Hawk’s plans for an Indian war and of the unidentified Cherokee who had joined the Wyandot.  He was surprised to find that his father had already encountered John Johnston, and was well aware of how the Indian agent could be used to further the renegade’s schemes.  His father, in turn, told him of his own encounter with Hawk, and of his and Daniel Boone’s capture and escape.   Daniel Boone, it seemed, was even now on the way to save his son. 

            His father shifted so he could meet his gaze.  The older man’s eyes were black as midnight against the surrounding halo of his silver-white hair.   With a slight smile, he asked, “Did I happen to mention how Hawk managed to capture Daniel and me?”

            Danny shook his head.  “No.”

            “Stupidity.”  The half-smile turned into a grin.  “It seems it runs in the family.”

            As his father spoke, White Wolf appeared behind him.  The native seemed anxious to speak, so Danny indicated with a look and a nod that he had arrived.

            “Yes?” his father asked as he turned.

            “We must go.  Already the time is long past since Whitehair was to be hanged.”

            “God forbid!” Danny breathed softly.

            “If the Creator has spared his life, then he must still be rescued.”  The Miami hesitated.  “I do not want to leave you alone in the forest with that wolf  roaming free.”

             His father rose to his feet and turned toward the younger man.  He held out his hand.  “White Wolf, you owe us no more.  It is we who owe you.  Danny and I will make our way back to the Wild Wood Inn and from there, see where fate leads us.”

            “We move fast, but go in the same direction,” the native said.  “Will you travel with us that far?”

            Danny was startled as his father answered, “I am an old man.  I doubt I could keep up.  We will take our time.”

            “Father….”

            A look from the elder Moray silenced him.  “We have been honored by your presence and, once again, thank you.  May the Creator watch over the paths you take,” his father said.

            White Wolf nodded.  “May all paths bring us, in the end, together once again.  Mingo.”  The native looked at him.  “Danny.”

            Several minutes of silence descended in the wake of the natives’ departure.  Danny glanced at his father and found him deep in thought.  Intending to honor the older man’s wish not to speak, Danny shifted as if to rise.  The moment he did, his father caught his arm and held him back.

            “We should stay together.”

            “I wasn’t going far.  I just thought, perhaps, you wanted a moment alone.  You seemed…preoccupied.”

            The older man pursed his lips and sighed.  “I was thinking of all the times Daniel and I took it into our hands to intervene in other people’s troubles, and how often it has brought us trouble in return.  We have made many enemies, that old frontiersman and I.”

             “Didn’t mother’s preacher say once that if you did not have enemies, you were not living as the Good Book proscribed?”

            His father laughed.  “I think that is the same as what Menewa told me once.  ‘If you have no scars, Cara,’ he declared, ‘you have not taken any chances.’ ”

            “You have had a long life and done much good,” Danny insisted.

            His father’s look grew far away again.  “Have I?”

            “How can you ask that?”

            “Take Hawk, for instance.  We tried to stop him – thought we had stopped him – but we were wrong.  We believed him dead, but here he is risen from the grave as sure and as certainly as your Uncle Tara once did.  Perhaps, Danny…perhaps evil cannot be killed.  Perhaps it is simply transferred from one willing host to another; a desperate desolate force that goes on forever – while good men wither and die.”

            “You are melancholy, Father.”

            The older man sighed.  “I am tired.  Tired of man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man, of his need for power, of greed and avarice, and of what he is willing to do to take it.  I cannot keep from my mind the image of John Johnston’s sons.”  He stretched out his hand and caught Danny’s fingers in his own.  “His grief could be mine.”

            “Do you know something of their fate?” Danny asked, suddenly frightened.

            His father rose to his feet and turned his face northwest in the direction White Wolf had indicated the boys had been taken, toward and beyond Boonesborough.  “No.  But I have a sense…a feeling that all is not well.”   After a moment, he asked suddenly, “Are you able to travel?”

            Danny rose to his feet.  “Yes, sir.  I am.  Where are we going?  To the inn as you told White Wolf?”    

  The older man shook his head.  “Your mother’s embrace will have to remain empty for a while longer.  Both Daniel and White Wolf are headed for the town.  There are others occupied in the search for the Johnston boys.  Someone must seek Hawk and put an end to his madness.”

“And how will you do that if the Indian Agent is in his power?  How can you and I alone stop a war that hundreds desire?”

Mingo waited, and then grinned broadly.  “Sheer cussedness.”

Danny was taken aback.  “What?”

“Another trait of your namesake.  Shall we see just how much of it you inherited?”

~

 Raeanne’s boy, Stephen, had fallen unconscious.  Shame and exhaustion along with loss of blood had overcome his determination to strike out and look for his brother again.  The water Rachel had boiled had come in handy, and she had spent the better part of an hour assisting his mother in cleaning and binding the young man’s wounds.  It seemed John Johnston was a man of many talents.  Along with being an Indian Agent, he had also served as assistant fort surgeon for half a decade at Fort Wayne and was well known in Upper Piqua, the place from which they hailed, as a setter of bones.  Raeanne had assisted him more than once, and a few of those times had been with her own children – though she had never seen anything like the fracture that faced them now.

            By the time they finished, Stephen’s mother was drained enough that Rachel had to take her by the arm and lead her to a chair and make her sit down before she fell down.  In all the time they had spent tending her elder son, she had never mentioned the younger one who was missing and presumed drowned.  Now that Stephen was safe in bed with a coverlet tucked beneath his chin, she had time to think.  In that moment Raeanne shattered and dissolved into tears.

            “Robinson,” she gasped as she covered her face with her hands, “my sweet boy…”    

            “Nothing is certain,” Rachel assured her, reaching out and touching her shoulder. 

            “That is the problem!” Raeanne snapped, showing the first bit of temper Rachel had ever seen.  “Nothing is certain.  John is seeking a madman who is bent on starting a war.  I know my husband.  He will not back down.  He is the steel against which Hawk’s flint will spark.  John will…die before he allows that evil man to kill one more innocent.  And Robinson….”  Raeanne drew a breath and straightened her back.  “I don’t know if he is alive or dead.  I only know that his brother blames himself, and if – if my Lord has taken my son to Himself – I will have lost two boys, not one.”

            Rachel heard a soft step on the floor and turned to look.  Her elder daughter was standing there.  “Yes?” she asked.

            “Supper is ready, Mama,” she replied. 

            Glancing at Raeanne, she answered, “We’ll be there in a moment.”

            Verity nodded her understanding and returned to the hearth.

            “You go ahead.  I cannot eat,” Raeanne insisted.

            “And what would your answer to that be if one of your daughters said the same?” Rachel asked gently.

            The other woman looked up.  “I would tell them to stop being foolish,” she answered.  “And that they needed their strength.”

            “They need your strength,” Rachel said watching as the girls filed past them, their heads down and chins resting on their chests.  She offered her a hand.   “They need to see your hope.”

            “Mother!” 

            It was Verity again and she sounded frightened.

            “What is it?” she asked as she pivoted toward her daughter.

            “Outside.  Torches.  And I can hear men’s voices.”

            She was right.  And the men did not sound happy. 

            “Get the rifle your father left.  And lock the door if you have time – ”

            They didn’t.  The door was open and a dirty tide of angry men spilled in.  There looked to be about a dozen.  Rachel stepped between her daughter and the mob.  A second later Raeanne, pale but determined, joined her. 

            “We’re looking for a man called Whitehair.  A white man that dresses like an Injun,” a livid faced man with sallow hair demanded.  “You seen him?”

            “There is no one like that here,” Rachel answered firmly.  “You and your men can go.”

            “On your word?” he asked with a smirk.

            “Are you accusing me of lying?” she countered, her tone indignant.

            The man’s eyes shot to Verity, taking in her black hair and golden complexion.  “That one yours?”

            “Mother?”

            Rachel turned to her.  “Go sit with the children.”  Raeanne’s girls were huddle together, trembling, and Rosanna had begun to wail.  Then she turned back to the man.  “Yes, that is my child.”

            “She part Injun?”

            Verity had the look of Mingo’s mother, or so he had told her.  She was much more native looking than Danny.  “Her father is half Cherokee,” she answered.  “Not that that is any of your business.”

            The man glared at her.  She could see the wheels turning in his mind – slowly, since the ground they covered was thick with ignorance and hate.  “That wouldn’t be old Daniel Boone’s Injun, would it?  I heard he married himself an Englishwoman and shown his true colors after all.”

            Rachel ignored the insult.  “I said you may go.”

            “I don’t think so.”  The man shook his head slowly.  “This puts a different turn to things.  Old Daniel Boone was soft on Injuns.  Taught his son to be soft on them too, so soft the boy married one and has been living like one of the filthy savages ever since.”  The man stepped into the room and circled the two of them.  “If I was that boy and I needed a place to hide, I’m sure Mingo – or Mingo’s wife would be more than happy to oblige me.”

            “You’re hunting Israel?” Rachel asked.

            “I’m hunting a dirty traitor to his race.  A man who would kill one of his own in defense of a savage.”

            “One of his own who had committed murder?”

            “Taking the life of an Injun ain’t murder.  You can only murder something that’s human.”  He came in close to her.  “And Injuns ain’t human.”

            “You, sir, are despicable,” Raeanne breathed between her teeth.

            “You married to an Injun too?” he growled as he pivoted toward her.

            “An Indian Agent,” she corrected.   Though it might not have been the wisest thing to admit.

            “Injun sympathizer, you mean!  There’s a nest of it here.”  The man turned and walked back toward his men.  He grabbed a torch from one of them and turned to face her.  “Maybe we should burn it out.”

            Behind them, Rachel could hear the children crying.  She clasped Raeanne’s hand and squeezed it tightly.  These men were obviously in their cups.  Who knew what they were capable of?  She noticed the innkeeper, Mr. McHenry, hanging to the back of the group.  So he had joined the hunt as he said, but not for Hawk – for Israel Boone.

            “I don’t know who you are, sir, but the fact that you are willing to threaten the lives of innocent children puts you lower than the slugs that crawl under rocks and fear the light of day,” Rachel declared.

            “I’d mind your tongue, Mrs. Mingo, otherwise you’ll wind up – ”

            “Now ain’t anyone ever told you it ain’t polite to threaten a woman?” a man’s voice proclaimed loudly.  A moment later an aged white-haired man, tall as the virgin timbers of Kentucky, passed through the mob that parted before him as if he had been Moses on the Red Sea shore.  They knew him.  So did she.  Rachel sighed with relief. 

            Always one for a spectacular rescue, he had done it again.

“Daniel,” she said.  “Thank God you have come.”