Journey Home Chapter Three

The mistake seemed stupid…even unbelievable now.  He didn’t know how he could have made it.   Danny Moray, merchant, son of the legendary Mingo, frowned as he strained against the ropes that bound him to a rough tree.  Still, one did not expect to run into two tall white-haired men of similar age and stature dressed in Indian garb in the middle of Kentucky in the Lord’s year of 1820.  Anyone could have made such a mistake.

Even if one of the two men was his father

Across the fire that occupied the middle of the clearing in which they had cast their tents, were about a half-dozen men, all native.  The tall distinguished elderly man whom he had mistaken for his father was obviously in charge.  Danny licked his lips and shifted, stifling a groan.  The men had not been kind.  His lower lip was split and his ribs screamed from the pummeling they had taken. 

“I see the son of the man I will kill is awake,” a low voice intoned.

            The tall elderly man in Indian garb must have spotted his movements.  Danny watched as the native rose and came to stand before him.  Danny could see how he had made the mistake.  This man was not unlike his father in appearance.  Tall.  In excellent health.  If not for the white hair and the greater care which age made such a man take with every step, one might have thought him twenty or thirty years younger than he was.   His grip was powerful enough.  Danny gasped as the man’s fingers closed on his throat.

“Where is he?” the deep voice demanded.

“I told you,” Danny answered, his voice a scratch.  “I don’t know who you are talking about.”

            “Your tongue may lie, young one, but your face speaks the truth.  Your hair may be the color of the corn on a summer’s night and your eyes the blue of your white mother, but the look out of them, the mouth that speaks, those are of the Cherokee dog I remember.”   The man studied Danny for a moment, and then slammed his head back into the tree before releasing the grip he held on Danny’s throat.  Then he drew so close his breath was a whisper on Danny’s cheek.  “You need not take me to him.  I have you.  My old enemy will come to me.  And then, I will also have my enemy’s friend.”

            “Why is my father your enemy?” Danny asked, allowing the pretense to fall away as his persecutor turned away from him.  “What has he done to you?”

            The man froze.  His broad shoulders stiffened.  When he turned back, his face was a mask.  “What has he not done?  Him, and the white man, Boone.”

Daniel shuddered.  The man’s words were quiet and menacing.  What shadow from his father’s past was this?  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice robbed of strength. 

The man caught his throat again and squeezed. 

“I am Hawk, and I am death.”

 ~ 

“Hawk?”   John Johnston frowned, trying to remember.  “I do not believe I have met him.  At least, not by that name.  He may have another.”

            “A white man’s name, you mean?”  Daniel Boone asked as he angled around a fallen tree trunk blocking the path.  In his younger days, he would have jumped it.  Not now.  Time and more injuries than he could count had taken their toll.  More than four-score years had he walked this earth. 

            Sometimes he wondered what God had left him here for. 

            John Johnston leapt over the log, landing gracefully just as Dan retook the path.  “Yes,” he said.  “Many of the Indians I have dealt with have adopted more common names.”

            “And your agency at Upper Piqua is how old?” Dan asked as they began to move again.

            “Nine years now,” John answered proudly.  “With eleven before that at Fort Wayne.”

            “You’ve already lived enough for several men, John.  Sounds like a life filled with adventure.”

            John nodded.  “I have been blessed – at work and at home.  But then, the same might be said of you, Daniel Boone.   Eighty-seven!  Twice the life span of a normal man.”

            Dan laughed.  “Kind of puts you at death’s door, then, don’t it?  An old man of forty-five?”  

            John’s laugh was hearty.  “I have no intention of rolling over and dying any time soon, Daniel.  I have too much to live for.”  He side-stepped a sinkhole in the trail while pointing out a low-hanging branch half-hidden in the shadows.  “And too many mouths to feed.  Which reminds me, where is that son of mine?  Stephen?  Stephen!”  John frowned.  “That boy.  He will come to trouble yet.”

            Dan clapped a hand on his shoulder.  “He’s young, John.  He’ll learn.  My son, Israel, was headstrong – and reckless at best when a boy – but he’s made a fine man.  And father.”

            John hesitated, stopping in the middle of the road.  “I hardly knew my father.  I came to this country from Ireland at eleven, and by the time he and my family followed, I was sixteen – a man and on my own.  He died when I was twenty.”  His aspect darkened.  “I have tried with Stephen, but my business affairs have kept me away too much.  I am ‘father’ to nearly six thousand Indians in Ohio.  I am afraid Stephen has suffered for it.”

            “We all find our own way,” Dan assured him.  “Your son will find his path.”

            Just as he spoke, the boy broke through the foliage before them.  Stephen was nearly as tall as his father and had hair the color of tow as John must have had when a youth.  He favored his father in looks, though there was a cast to his face – a frail delicacy that must have come from his mother.  Stephen held up a rock which had been scored with an ‘x’. 

            “I found it, Father!  This is the trail!”

            John released his unspoken prayer in a sigh.  “And your mother is at the end of it.  Dear Lord, let them all be preserved and safe.”           

~ 

Dawn had just broken.  The children were still sleeping.  Mingo had been speaking to Rachel Johnston when she suddenly went rigid and the color rose in her cheeks.  He turned to look and saw three men emerging from the trees, their tall forms silhouetted against the growing light.  One was Daniel Boone; the other two, strangers.

            “John?” Rachel whispered, and then called out wildly, “John!”

            Mingo grinned.  It was obvious this was Rachel’s missing husband and that, even after nine children, the romance had not left their marriage. 

            He watched as her husband opened his arms and she fell into them.  It made him think of his own Rachel.  She must be wild with fear by now.  His wife and Verity had stayed behind at the inn while he, Danny, and Daniel Boone had set out to find the truth of the rumor of the return of Hawk, the renegade Tuscaroras now turned Wyandot, they had thought shot and buried so many years before.  His Rachel was spry for a woman of close to seventy, but he had not wanted her subjected to the elements, or the danger Hawk might represent.  His daughter, Verity, had agreed and had made up an excuse, feigning illness, to keep her mother at the inn and safe from harm.

            With his arm about his wife, John Johnston approached him and held out his hand.  “Mingo.  Son of Talota and sister-son of Menewa,  I have heard much of you from your Indian brothers.”

            Mingo shook his hand.  The grip was strong.  “Good, I hope?”

            John nodded.  “You are an admirable man.  More than admirable.”  He glanced at Daniel then, who waited behind with a tow-haired youth.  “Both of you.  I hope my sons may prove to be men such as you.” 

            “Father?” the young man called. 

            “Yes, Stephen?”

            He nodded toward the wagon.  “May I join the others?”

            As John agreed Mingo said, unable to keep a certain amount of skepticism from his tone, “Your wife tells me you are an honest Indian agent..” 

            John glanced at Rachel as she slipped out of his grip and followed their son.   “And you did not know such a creature existed?”  John’s reply was etched with anger.  “Sad to say, you would be right on most accounts.  Honest agents are in the minority.  I have always stood for what is right.”

            “No matter what the cost?”

            John Johnston’s grey eyes were sincere.  “No matter what the cost.”

            Mingo clapped him on the shoulder.  “It is a privilege then, to know one.  Are you here for the same reason we are?  The supposed Indian uprising?”

            John looked surprised.  “No, our trip was personal.  We had gone to Philadelphia to visit Rachel’s family and returned via Kentucky to buy more cattle for the farm at Upper Piqua.  This had nothing to do with the Shawano or the Wyandot.”  He paused.  “This Hawk, is that who you mean?”

            Mingo’s face grew solemn.  “Long ago, we stopped Hawk from reclaiming his son from a white couple.  We…killed him, we believed, though his body disappeared.”

“We figured his men carried it off when no one was looking,” Daniel Boone interjected softly.

“Yes.”  Mingo cleared his throat.  “Little Bear was raised by the whites and he grew to be a fine man.  Unfortunately – recently – he died at the hands of other whites here in Kentucky.  At first it seemed as if nothing would come of it, and then several nearby homes were burnt out.  Settlers were taken unawares on the road, tortured, and then killed.  The victim of preference seems to be young men.  One youth’s body was found by his father hanging in the family barn.”  Mingo’s eyes flicked to the wagon where John Johnston’s sons sat, even as his thoughts flew to his own ‘boy’.  “Rumor has it that Hawk has resurfaced after living with the Wyandot for years, that he is recruiting disgruntled Indians from among the remnants of the Shawano and Wyandot and is bent on revenge.  Daniel and I know him on sight.  We were asked to com, to find him and stop him.”

            “To kill him, you mean.”   John’s voice was tight.  Mingo knew he was thinking the same thing –  of his wife and children, inadvertently caught in the middle of all this.

            “Or send him to prison.”  Mingo frowned at the thought of the wild spirit of an Indian warrior trapped behind bars.  “If it were me, I would rather die,” he said softly.  Then he turned to his old friend.  “Daniel, where is Danny?”

            Dan frowned.  “He ain’t here?”

            Mingo shook his head.  “No, he was with you.”

            “We split up.  Went lookin’ in two different directions.  We were supposed to rendezvous here ‘bout sundown.  Mr. Johnston here made me a little late,” Dan added with a grin.  “Don’t worry, Mingo.  You know young’uns.  Danny’s probably just nosin’ out something.  You taught him well.”

            Mingo had grown very silent.  He shook his head as his eyes again went to the trees.  “My heart tells me otherwise, Daniel.”

            John Johnston had been watching them.  He called out to his son suddenly.  Stephen was standing by the broken wagon talking to the others.  His little brother was perched on his shoulders.  Stephen came quickly at his father’s call, bearing Robinson with him.  The dark-haired boy was sleepy but grinning. 

            “Father?” Stephen asked.

            John met his puzzled stare.  “I need you to take your mother and the children to town.”

            “But Father – ” he began to protest.

            “No argument.  There are dangerous men in these woods.  I am entrusting their safety entirely to you.”  John’s look and voice softened as he caught the eye of the little boy.  “And your brother, of course.”

            “Take them to the Wild Wood Inn and ask for a Mrs. Moray or Verity Killmarin,” Mingo suggested.  “One is my wife and the other, my daughter,” he explained to John.  “They will watch over your family if it is your intention to join us in the hunt – as I think it is.”

            “I know many of the Shawano and Wyandot, and their languages as well.  I might be of some assistance,” John offered.

            Rachel Johnston had come to join them.  She reached out and touched her husband’s sleeve.  Her voice was small and frightened.  “Must you?”

John returned the smile and the touch, placing his hand on her head and kissing the soft brown stuff of her hair.  “You know the answer to that.”

            Rachel laughed.  “I know,” she said as she drew away, “but still I must ask.”  She turned to her son.  “Stephen, we must do as your father tells us.  Rouse the others.  Gather our things.  We will leave as soon as all is prepared.”

            John caught her hand and pulled her back.  “You are an excellent woman, Mrs. Johnston.  Do you know that?”

            Rachel touched his chin with her fingers.  “Only because you tell me at least once a day – when you are home.   If you see any of our friends, give them my regards.”

            “I will.”

            “And John, take care,” she added, whispering what was obviously a familiar prayer.  “I don’t know what I would do without you.”