Journey Home Chapter Six

Danny shifted and pulled the little boy closer.   The day had dawned and, as it did, the child had fallen asleep.  Upon Hawk’s exit from the camp, his men had tormented the child, mock fighting with him, making a pretense that they would scalp him and threatening all manner of indecent things about what they would do if they took the women in his family.  When he had tried to intervene, Danny had been knocked to the ground with the butt of a gun and then placed under the watchful eye of one of Hawk’s lieutenants.  After about an hour, when the child could no longer keep his feet, one of the natives had plucked him from the ground and carried him to where Danny sat and tossed him beside him on the grass.  The boy’s dark hair was as disheveled as his leather breeches and linen shirt.  Somewhere along the way he had lost his shoes, and the soles of his feet were bleeding as was his forehead from where one of the men had struck him.  But the child was not bowed, nor had he surrendered.  Even as his injured feet hit the earth, he was back up on them and ready to go.  Danny caught him about the waist and held him back.

It had been quite a struggle.

Then, as if that last burst of energy had taken everything he had, the boy had fallen silent and quickly drifted into an exhausted sleep.

That had been about three hours before.

Danny leaned his head back against the tree that braced them.  His own little ones were back home with his wife.  He had one just about this boy’s age named, to his father’s chagrin, Kerr.  Kerr was a quiet studious boy, bound no doubt for a life with his nose in a book.  This one reminded him of his eldest, John – named for his father’s father for tradition’s sake.  John would be a soldier.  There was nothing else for him.

To keep his arm from falling asleep,  Danny shifted again.  This time the little boy stirred and moaned.

“Shh,” Danny whispered.  Better the boy walk wherever his dreams had led him than here, in reality.

“Pa?”

“Your pa’s not here.  My name is Danny.  You’re safe.  Go back to sleep.”

Eyes brown as the boy’s hair opened and looked up at him.  His small face was dirt and blood-stained, and Danny thought he detected the trace of a tear or two.  Nothing, of course, that he would mention. 

“Do I know you, mister?” the boy asked.

Danny shook his head.  “No.  But I am a friend.”

“Are those men still here?”  The child trembled at the thought, but caught himself quickly and stiffened his spine. 

“Yes.  They are close by.  Watching.”

The boy’s jaw set.  “We gotta get out of here.  They don’t mean no…any good.”  He sat up and looked around.  “Is my ma here?  Or the girls?”

“No.  Just you and me.”

The boy disengaged himself and then turned back.  A second later he stuck out his hand.  “My name is Robinson.  Robinson Johnston.  Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.”

Danny hid his smile as he took the boy’s hand.  “Daniel Moray.  You may call me Danny.”

“Moray?  Are you French?”

This time he did laugh.  “No, Scottish.”

“Pa says we’re American, but he came from Ireland.  He was just a little older than me when he did.  I’d like to see Ireland someday.”

The wonder of a child, Danny thought, was to think of such things when your life was hanging by a thread.  He glanced up at their captors and saw that one of them had realized the boy was awake.  The man was headed their way.

“Robinson.  Get behind me.”

The boy saw what was coming.  At first he appeared scared.  Then he set his jaw again and shook his head.  “They don’t scare me.”

“That’s an order, private,” Danny said, capturing the smile again.

The boy’s dark brows shot up and then he grinned.  With a smart salute, he shifted behind him just as the native arrived.

“You will come with me,” the man ordered.

Danny shook his head.  “I won’t leave the boy.”

The native was all bare bone and gristle.  When he smiled it gave him the appearance of a cadaver.  “We travel.  If you fall behind, we will kill you both.”

At least there would be no attempt to part them.  “Where are we going?” Danny asked.

A swift kick to his side was his only reply.

As the native walked away, he felt Robinson’s small hand on his shoulder.  “They aren’t all like that – Indians, you know.”  The boy spoke softly; his tone solemn.  “Most of them are good men.”

With a hand pressed to his side, Danny shifted to look at him, amazed.  “I know,” he said.  “And I am glad you do as well.”

“Pa says a bad man is just a bad man, no matter the color of his skin.”  The boy glared at the native who waited for them a few yards away.  “And these are just bad men.”

Danny rose to his feet.  He placed a protective hand on the boy’s shoulder. 

Yes.  They were bad men indeed.

            They walked throughout the early morning hours, headed north and slightly east.  Danny had no idea where they were taking them, or why.  If they meant to kill them outright, the natives could have done it where they were.  It seemed Hawk had some other scheme in mind.  As they walked, he and the boy chatted whenever it was permitted.  After talking to Robinson, Danny started to wonder if the boy’s father didn’t have something to do with Hawk being in this area.  His own father and Daniel Boone had told him little about the renegade Wyandot, but it seemed Hawk’s main thrust was renewed purity among the Indians – much as Tecumseh’s brother, the Open Door, had desired a decade before.  Only Hawk’s army would not be one of men practicing civil disobedience, but an army of men fueled by unreasonable hatred, with a deep-seated need to destroy.

            Finally about noon, with the sun directly overhead, they stopped.  They had come to a place which was familiar to him; one that he recognized after a few minutes.  It was an area he had visited first as a lad of fourteen on his nascent trip to America.  They were near Boonesborough, the settlement Daniel Boone had established and then left after the trouble with Colonel Calloway.  Behind the trees to their left was a common watering hole – a waterfall in fact, hidden deep in a cleft in the ground.  Boone’s elder son, Israel, had once made this his home, along with his half-Indian wife, Sunalei, the child of Copperhead and Miriam.  He didn’t know if they remained here still.

            The Indians had let them walk mostly unmolested, though they had struck Danny twice for falling behind.  He had carried Robinson most of the way.  The boy’s will, it seemed, exceeded his stamina.  Neither of them had had any food in more than a day and between that and his ill-treatment, the child was weakening.  For his own part Danny realized even more how age had changed him.  He was no longer a young man.  The events of the last day had strained him to the limit.  He was still on the lookout for a chance to escape, but if the opportunity arose he was not certain he would have the strength to take it.

            A moment later Danny realized he would not have to worry about it – as fate gave another hostage to fortune.

            “Let me go!” a strident male voice insisted.  Danny looked and found several of Hawk’s warriors emerging from the trees, dragging someone between them.  The young man was fair-haired and somewhere in his late teens.  “Let me go, you villains!” he shouted.

            The boy standing at his side stiffened at the sound.  Robinson at first looked puzzled, and then his face lit with a wide grin.  Before Danny could stop him, the child broke loose of his grip and headed for the newcomers.  “Stephen!” Robinson cried out as he ran.  “Stephen!” 

            “Robinson, no!” Danny shouted, fearful of reprisal.  To his surprise the two natives holding the youth released him and stepped away, allowing the older boy to tumble to the ground.  Stephen righted himself quickly and rose just as Robinson arrived.  Danny watched as relief washed through the older boy’s lean frame, almost unmanning him. 

            “Rob!  Rob, you’re alive!” Stephen shouted with obvious joy as the boy jumped into his arms.

            Danny wanted to smile at what he recognized now as brothers reunited, but the looks on the faces of Hawks’ men instead caused him to frown.  There was a deep satisfaction there, and an unholy kind of joy.  The renegade Wyandot was playing a game.

            One none of them was going to like.

~

 A lone figure paused on the road just outside of the village of Boonesborough.  It was noon and the day had grown hot.  He slipped off of his palomino horse to the dusty road and removed his coat.  Untying the black ribbon that supported his high collar, he opened the shirt and ran a hand along his throat.  The image he had seen only hours before remained firmly fixed in his mind.

It was the first time he had seen the end results of a hanging.

Shaking his deep brown hair, the man with a complexion grown darker than his horse’s golden coat from constant exposure to the sun, reached for his saddle and unhooked the water-skin tethered there.  He poured some of the liquid in his hand, drank, and then tossed the remainder down the open front of his shirt.  Squinting, he looked toward the town.  Boonesborough had once been a thriving settlement; the prow of the great ship of advancing white civilization into what had then been Indian country.  Now, forty-five years later there was little left.  There were fewer than sixty people in the town which was now, for the most part, referred to as a dilapidated village.

So went the greatness of man.

Replacing the water-skin, the man reached for his saddlebag.  Lifting the leather flap, he pulled out a packet of letters.  For a moment he stood, staring at them.  They were what had brought him to this place.  The author of the letters had begged him to remain silent about their content.  Anyone who cared, she said, was too old to trouble.  The writer trusted him to see them through.

He only hoped that trust was not misplaced.

Once, when he had been young, he had believed in such a thing as justice.  Now he knew it was who you knew and how well your efforts lined their pockets.  Still, he had not given up.  In the world there was both good and evil and he had pledged his life – to the death if necessary – to see that those who were good won, and that those who were bad, paid.

The man’s hand returned to his throat and he looked back toward the farm he had passed – the one where they had found a youth hanging only the night before, the victim of renewed Indian violence.  The men in the barn had looked on him with suspicion – at the dark brown hair and light copper skin he had inherited from his father’s people, at the deep blue eyes his mother’s had bequeathed him – but they had not chased him away.  At first he had thought it was because they trusted him.  But then, as he left the barn he had heard one of the men remark, loud enough to carry to his half-native ears, ‘The only good Injun is a dead one.’

Then he realized they had let him see the young man’s body as a warning.

He wondered now if the men had realized who he was.  His client would have told those holding him that he had an attorney coming.  Perhaps they had been watching; waiting for the redskin who dared to take the bar and who was willing, in the face of all odds, to take the case of an Indian accused of killing a white man.

An Indian who was white.

The man glanced at the packet he still held in his hand.  The script on the top letter was even, if inelegant.  But then, it had been many years since his sister Sunalei had been to school, and more since she had found a need to write him.  Her husband did that for her.  Of course, he couldn’t now – now that Israel Boone was being held in Boonesborough’s jail under a sentence of death.

Adam Fox, once known as Adohi, eldest son of Copperhead, replaced the packet in his saddlebag and pulled the strap tight.  Then he mounted his horse and headed for the inn near the edge of town.  The old man who had run it as a tavern when he was a boy, Cincinnatus Jones, was long since in his grave.  He had heard a nephew of the crusty proprietor kept it now, stubborn as his uncle about remaining true to what was his own.  He would go there tonight, for food and rest.

After that, he doubted he would know little of either until all of this was over.

 ~ 

Daniel Moray drew a deep breath and held it.  He reminded himself again that he had been young once – and rather foolish at times.  Stephen Johnston seemed to be a fine young man but he was impulsive, and prone to take too much on himself.  In some ways, Stephen reminded Danny of his own father.  There was in the man known as Mingo a deep-rooted need to punish himself for sins only he could see. 

Stephen felt responsible for what had happened.  He felt guilty that he had abandoned his mother and sisters to seek his brother, and even guiltier that Robinson had been taken in the first place.  And now, he was determined to escape.

Danny could understand his desire to do so, but the men who held them were just as determined.  They were armed to the teeth and there was Robinson to consider.  Brave as the little boy was, he was a deterrent to the success of any plan.   All too easily he could be taken again and his life held hostage against them.

They had only been able to talk in brief snatches.  After meeting up with the natives who held the elder Johnston boy, the three of them had been set on the march again, covering he knew not how many miles during the remainder of the day.  Now, as the sun sank and a chill set in, they paused again, waiting…waiting for something.

Or someone.

Several hours later he was roused by a soft word in his ear.  Danny shifted, disturbing, but not waking Robinson who had fallen asleep beside him as he did.  Stephen was sitting up.  He nodded toward the fire where Hawk’s men sat talking and smoking.  Danny blinked the sleep from his eyes and looked.  There was a new group of natives among them led by an older man – older maybe than his father and Daniel Boone, but only by a few years.  He was short and square as a government building, with no neck and a thick face tanned like dark leather by decades in the sun.  He was dressed in native garb – completely.  The man wore only buckskins decorated with shells and quills.  There was no woven cloth on him, no trade bead or tin cone, and his grizzled hair was held back from a wrinkled forehead by a finger-woven band.  Each and every inch of what he wore was a statement of defiance against the advance of the white man and his civilization.  About the newcomer  were several other men he had never seen.  One of them was a giant.

“Do you know him?” Stephen whispered.

Danny shook his head.  “No, but he looks to be about my father’s age.  And there is something.  If I didn’t know better, I might think him Cherokee.”

“What makes you think that?”

He shrugged.  “Just a feeling.”

“They’re busy now,” the youth continued.  “Maybe we could get away – ”

Gripping his arm, Danny pointed to the trees to the left and right of them.  “What do you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Stephen replied.

“Look again.  Closely.  Look past the leaves.”

Stephen frowned but, to his credit, did as Danny said.  The youth squinted and frowned.  Then, suddenly, there was an intake of breath.  “They’re up in the trees!”

“Watching.  Always watching.  Stephen, there is one thing you must understand.  Hawk is playing games with us.  You can take nothing for granted if you want to stay alive.”  Danny placed a hand on Robinson.  “If you want to keep him alive.”

“I’d die for Robinson.”

“I know you would, son.” 

Stephen leaned back and was quiet for a moment.  Then he asked with less bravado.  “What do you think they mean to do with us?”

“Use us to hurt our fathers.  It is Hawk’s only goal.”

“But my father doesn’t even know him,” the boy protested.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”  Stephen paused.  “No.  My father has dealt with thousands of Indians.  I suppose Hawk could have been one of them.”

“Stephen,” Danny said, his voice edged with concern.

“What?”

“Gather your little brother up.  We’re soon not to be alone.”

As Stephen picked up Robinson, Danny moved in front of the two boys.  The native who had only just arrived walked slowly toward them, limping as he came.  Behind him was a cadre of younger men.  One in particular took Danny’s attention.  He was a man in his thirties, dressed as a white, who appeared to be of mixed blood.  A rare thing among those attending Hawk.  The man had an intelligent face, and there was something about him that was impossibly familiar, though he couldn’t place it.  The older native stopped before them and stared directly into Danny’s face.

And then he spit in it.

Stephen Johnston shifted ominously.  Danny’s look stopped him.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cloth and calmly wiped his cheek.  “Tell me, sir,” Danny said, mastering his anger, “what I have done to deserve such treatment at your hands?”

“I see it in you, half-breed.  You are his son.”

“You know my father?”

“I knew him.  Many years ago.  You have his face, though it is reflected in you pale as the moon above.”

“And why do you hate him?  And me?”

“I do not hate you.  I pity you, son of Mingo and a white woman.”

Danny glanced at Stephen to make certain the youth was not about to make any sudden move.  John Johnston’s eldest son remained still, seemingly mesmerized by the native’s words.

“Pity me?  Why?”

“Soon, you shall die.  As will the other white man’s sons.”  He indicated the boys with a gesture of his hand.  “You die not for your sins, but for your father’s.”

Danny drew a steadying breath.  “Tell me of these sins.”

The old man’s lips curled with a  sneer.  “In time.  Not now.  Now it is time to go.”

“Go.  Go where?”

From out of the darkness Hawk’s lieutenants appeared, joining the other men.  There must have been two dozen of them at least, moving like an inexorable red tide.  At a signal the natives rushed forward.  They gripped his arms and pinned them behind his back and then forced a gag between his lips.  As Danny watched, the same was done to Stephen and Robinson and then, to his horror, they were separated and dragged in opposite directions. 

The old man stood calmly anchored in the middle of the storm and, even though he should not have been able to, Danny heard his words, spoken as he and the Johnston boys were dragged off into the trees.

“That is for Daniel Boone and Mingo to discover.”

 ~

             Adam frowned as he brought his hand down yet again on the rough wooden surface of the tavern’s door.  He waited, and then crossed the porch and looked in one of the windows.  There was a light burning within, so someone had to be at home.  Glancing back at the ramshackle buildings surrounding the establishment – a stable with three walls and a shed that looked like a portal to another, not too pleasant world – he chastised himself for not remaining in Lisletown for the night.  But he had wanted to be about business.  If he could have, he would have gone into the village and sought out the jail and jailer tonight.  Still, he knew that was pointless.  Besides, if he tried to move around after dark there was every possibility that he would end up lynched.

             Turning back, Adam bent to look through the window again and jumped when he found himself face to face with the business end of a rusted and very ancient firearm.

            “Who goes there?” a nasal voice demanded.  “Give your name, or turn your back and take a blast of buckshot in it!”

            Backing away, Adam raised his hands.  “Adam Fox,” he replied.

            “Do I know you?”

            “No, but I knew your Uncle Cincinnatus.  I used to live not far from here.”

            There was no reply.  Adam remained still a moment and then dared to bend and look again.  The window was empty.  Just as he straightened up he heard a click, and then the door of the tavern opened inward.  As it did, a man who could best be described as resembling an electrified squirrel stepped onto the porch and pointed the antique weapon at him again.

            “Who’d you say you are?”

            “Adam Fox.  Your uncle knew me as Adohi.  My father is Copperhead, Mingo’s friend.  I sent a letter ahead informing you of my arrival.”

            “Never got it.  We don’t get no letters around here.  The postmaster died two years ago.”

            “So what happens to the letters?”

            The man shrugged.  “His wife ain’t saying.”

            Adam’s frown only deepened.  “Excuse me?”

            “Why?  You done something wrong?”

            Come to Boonesborough, obviously, he thought to himself.  “Do you have a room to let for the night?”

            The tavern-keeper peered over the round end of his gun.  “That depends.”

            “On what?”

            “You an Injun or a white man?  You look mighty like an Injun.”

            Honesty being the best – if not always the brightest policy – he answered, “Well, I’m both actually.”

            “Injuns ain’t welcome around here now.  Been some bad things happening.”

            “I know that.  That’s why I am here.  I am a lawyer, and I….”

            The blunderbuss came back up and was leveled at him.  “A lawyer!  Jumping Jehosaphat!  That’s worse than being an Injun.”

            Adam threw up his hands.  “Fine, I’ll go then.”  Somehow the prospect of sleeping on the ground seemed infinitely preferable to remaining where he was for another moment.

            “You just stay right where you are,” the human squirrel ordered.  As Adam obeyed, the man said, “Now tell me what an uppity half-breed like you is doing in a place like Boonesborough.”

            “Sir!  That is uncalled for….”

            The squirrel waved the gun.  “Answer the question.”

            “I came here to defend a friend who has been unjustly accused of murder.  I – ”

            “Name.  Give me a name.”

            Adam hesitated. 

            “Bessie’s getting a mite restless,” the man said, waving the weapon again.

            “If you must know it is Boone,” Adam snapped.  “Israel Boone!”

            The man’s grey eyes, which had been wide and wild with madness, narrowed with sudden clarity.  His hold on the gun did not waver, but Adam noticed that his finger slipped off the trigger.

            “Israel Boone, eh?  That’s one of old Daniel’s boys, ain’t it?  The one that’s been living as an Injun all these years?”

            “Yes.  He is married to my sister.”

            The man shook his grizzled head.  “More and more half-breed Injuns.  One day we won’t be able to tell one from the other – what will the world be like then?”

            Adam was left speechless.  “Sir…I….”

            With one eye to the surrounding trees, the innkeeper used the blunderbuss to indicate the open door behind him.  “Why don’t you and I finish up this conversation inside?”

            Adam wasn’t certain he wanted to.  “I can come back tomorrow.”

            “Nonsense.  You come on in.  We gotta figure out what to do with you.”

            His hands still raised, Adam stepped into the tavern.  It was dimly lit with only a few guttering candles.  He half expected to find a lynch mob waiting inside, rope in hand, to take him out and hang him from the nearest tree for daring to exist.  Instead, he found a slender shape wrapped in shadow that turned toward him even as the tavernkeeper closed the door and bolted it.

            “I had to be certain,” the man apologized as he lowered his gun.  “You can’t trust anyone nowadays.”

            Adam spun toward him, and then turned back as the figure moved forward into the light.  The woman lifted her arms and held them out.

            “Adohi, my brother,” she whispered as tears streamed down her sun-burnt cheeks.

            It was Sunalei.