Eye of the Raven (12 page)

Duncan stepped closer. Finally he understood Van Grut's fear when he had visited the fourth marker tree. "You were sent by Burke to the tree where he died, the same morning he died? Except you got drunk instead?"

Van Grut nodded, closing his eyes.

"We could sit until nightfall," came Conawago's quiet voice, "and not list all those with complaints against boundary markers and surveyors. Elsewhere the British and French may fight each other because their kings hate each other. But here they fight over the rights to land. When the French leave, the war over land will continue, just fought in different ways. Half a dozen companies already compete for these territories, subject to few laws and fewer lawmen. The Virginians compete with the Pennsylvanians, and both oppose the Connecticut and New York companies. The Pennsylvania Susquehanna Company despises the Philadelphia Land Company. The smaller tribes subjugated by the Iroquois resent them for selling their lands, where they traditionally lived. The Susquehannocks, the Conoy, the Shawnee, the Nanticokes, the Delawares consider the transfer of these lands to be invalid. More than a few Iroquois resent the handful of chiefs who sign away possession."

Conawago shrugged. "There are many possible killers, but surely only one effect. Killing the surveyors defeats the Virginia land claims."

As he spoke Conawago had been studying the tree. Now he dropped to his knees and pulled away the vines that covered part of the lower trunk. The markings near the base were nearly obscured by many years' growth of roots and vines. As he began pulling it away from the base of the tree Duncan joined him. Soon they had cleared a radius of several feet around it.

The symbols at the bottom of the trunk were old, blurred by the growth of the bark, but the representations of the forest animals crudely carved on the ledge stone underfoot were still clearly visible. Duncan stepped back, looking at the stone, then the tree. There were layers of messages, seeming to span centuries. Spirit messages of the Indians. Educated messages of Europeans. Diabolic messages of killers.

Van Grut, his anxiety quickly giving way to his scientific curiosity, dropped to his hands and knees on the stone. Duncan pulled him away. The Dutchman's protest faded as he saw the intense melancholy with which Conawago stared at the symbols.

"Do you have more tobacco?" Duncan asked Hadley.

"Of course," the Virginian answered, then frowned as he grasped Duncan's meaning and reluctantly reached into the bag at his belt.

Van Grut and Hadley followed Duncan's example as he arranged embers from their cooking fire in a semicircle around the old carved rocks, then crumbled leaves of tobacco over each. As they stepped back Conawago began murmuring a prayer in one of the old tongues, with open hands gracefully sweeping the fragrant smoke over the ancient, sacred stones.

"I don't understand anything," Hadley finally said with a sigh.

"It has been Conawago's quest these past months, seeking out these old sacred places. Those who ceded the land used the old Warriors Path as a boundary. Certainly they didn't know that under their feet was something else, a pilgrim's way as it were, spanning untold generations."

"Surely it is too much coincidence."

"Not at all. The geography funnels humans here. The trail mostly follows the bottomlands, between the high ridges. Anyone traveling from the north to the rich Ohio country or to the Virginian settlements would follow this course. And where it crosses the most important river of the region would be a natural place for a marker, for a shrine even."

"Before this," Conawago joined in, "before Europeans, the Iroquois fought terrible wars with the Catawbas and others in the south, in what you call Virginia and the Carolinas. This is the trail they would take. Since time out of mind war parties would pass here, stop for blessings, for purification before crossing over into the lands where the enemy dwelled, or to give thanks for safe passage on their return."

Duncan remembered Skanawati's warning and looked about the landscape. The Monongahela was visible through the trees to the south. Stay away from the bloody water, he had said, or you may fall into the crack in the world. As he looked out at the bones still scattered over the forest floor and the sacred tree scarred by two murders, he was not inclined to argue the point. The butcher's ground was not simply a perfect place to commit murder-who would notice two more sets of bones?-but also its dark air seemed to speak of more death to come.

"But why, McCallum," Hadley asked as he watched Conawago, kneeling among the stone carvings, whispering to them now, "would the Monongahela Company want to interfere with a sacred-"

"They didn't need to know anything about its history. All the old trails followed prominent contours in the land, a natural boundary. Ask an Indian to draw a map, or a land grant, and he would use the trails as a base line as surely as roads would be used in the settled lands. No one knew about the sacred history of the trail, nor needed to know."

"I still don't understand," Hadley repeated.

"Such a place is not for understanding," Duncan said, and he gestured the Virginian to the cairn. "It is for reverence." They silently stacked several more large flat rocks on top. Van Grut watched Conawago at first with fear, then tried futilely to ask the old Indian about the symbols carved in the ledge stone. But Duncan knew Conawago was no longer there, no longer seeing or hearing his companions. He had gone away with the ancestors and spirits of the forest. At last the Dutchman gave up his questioning, took out his journal, and began to sketch the marks on the tree.

"There must be something more we should do for them," Hadley said, staring forlornly at the cairn.

"Give them a Psalm," Duncan offered.

Hadley nodded slowly and thought a moment.

Duncan was so certain of what the young colonial would speak, he almost commenced the comforting Twenty-third's words of shepherds and flocks himself.

"Lord," Hadley began instead, "thou has been our dwelling place, in all generations. Thou turnest man to destruction and sayest, `Return ye children of men.' For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night."

Duncan's grandfather also had preferred the Ninetieth. To hear the words now gave him unexpected comfort. He mouthed the final words as Hadley spoke them. We spend our years as a tale that is told.

After they finished they silently stacked several small colorful rocks on the top of the cairn.

Van Grut was sitting on a log, still sketching, when they returned to the far side of the tree.

"You still have not answered me, Van Grut," Duncan said.

"I don't know, I tell you. I don't know why surveyors are being killed."

"You met Burke only once?"

"By Ligonier, yes."

"Did you show him your journal?"

"I was working on it when he met me. He asked to see it."

Duncan extended his hand, and Van Grut handed him the sketchbook. Each time Duncan held it he saw something new. This time, leafing through, he discovered many portraits of Indians, several with inset sketches of moccasins, pipes, baskets, and other accoutrements of tribal life. "He saw you were beginning to understand Indian life, perhaps read Indian messages."

"Surely that means nothing."

"Who were the first to be killed?"

"Townsend, if you credit the rumors. Then these two we have now found."

"Townsend knew the Indians and their ways. Then this surveyor Cooper and his Indian wife, his Iroquois wife. In Philadelphia there are many surveyors available."

"What are you saying?"

"All the early victims knew something about Indian signs."

"Not the man Cooper who died here."

"Maybe at first they hired an Indian who had a surveyor with her. The most urgent task was to find trees with the Indian markings."

Van Grut's brow wrinkled in confusion.

"Last autumn, after the two died here, several Iroquois died on the northern end of this same trail, by similar markers."

"What are you saying?" the Dutchman asked.

"It wasn't exactly surveyors who died at first." Duncan cast a worried glance at Conawago. "The murderer started with those who can read the trees."

Duncan found all of his companions staring at him. The old Indian seemed about to speak, then suddenly cocked his head to the north. The screams they heard a moment later seemed distant at first, but the war whoops and gunshots that followed were just over the next ridge.

UNCAN AND CONAWAGO darted into the forest shadows, the young Scot sweeping up his rifle, his comrade extending his war club as they ran, not directly at the sounds of battle but in an arc that would put them in the shelter of the rocks above it.

His fear of the forest had never fully retreated despite his months with Conawago, and suddenly Duncan was reliving the terrible moments when he had first ventured alone into the deep forest, convinced that death lurked in every shadow. He struggled to push down his fear, keeping his eyes on his friend. As always, as danger threatened, the presence of the old Indian steadied him. Duncan echoed his movements, listening, instinctively marking the dangers ahead. The deep, throaty roar of rifles being fired close together, the bark of shorter muskets scattered among the trees, the hiss of arrows, the whoop of attacking warriors. They were half a mile from the boundary tree when Duncan glimpsed the small band besieged at the base of a low ridge.

"My God!" came a terrified voice behind him, "this place is cursed for Virginians!" Hadley was gasping, shaking with fear.

Duncan studied the figures ahead and saw that it was, indeed, the small party of returning militia who were under attack. "Do you know how to shoot that thing?" Hadley had at least had the presence of mind to bring his musket.

"It isn't loaded," the Virginian confessed in a voice cracking with fear. He pulled out the ramrod and reached for a ball and cartridge, but his hand shook so much half the powder spilled out of the barrel. Duncan took the ammunition and finished the job as Van Grut arrived, clutching his fowling piece.

"What else do you have in your kit?" Duncan demanded as he noticed the pack on Hadley's back. As the Virginian dumped it onto the ground Duncan probed the contents with his foot, keeping one eye on Conawago, who was creeping closer to the skirmish. He bent and lifted a small piece of carved bone. Hadley had kept the end of the Iroquois signal arrow shot at the trial. Duncan studied the whistle for only a moment before speaking in a low, urgent voice, then made Hadley and Van Grut repeat his instructions before sprinting forward.

Seconds later he was beside the old Nipmuc. Duncan quickly explained his plan, bringing a cool grin to Conawago's face, then stole away to another rock formation a hundred feet away. A moment later an odd raspy sound, the call of a shrike, rose from Conawago's hiding place. Duncan repeated the call and saw one of the raiders pause and look fearfully toward them just as Hadley sounded the Iroquois whistle, followed an instant later by the flat crack of Van Grut's gun. Hadley blew again, then fired his own gun.

Duncan had no faith in the marksmanship of his companions, had told them to simply aim in the general direction of the raiders, but he took a moment to sight his own rifle, selecting a tall Huron who bent over an unseen body with his knife. He hit where he aimed, in the shoulder of the knife arm, knocking the man onto his back. A moment later, as the Iroquois whistle sounded again, the man struggled to his feet, clutching his shoulder, then he shouted several syllables, and the raiders faded into the shadows.

The joy with which the two Virginians still on their feet greeted Hadley disappeared as Duncan explained the ruse, mimicking the signals favored by Mohawk warriors, the fiercest of the Iroquois nations.

"There's no one else?" the younger of the two moaned. "We're all dead! Attacked by a hundred at least!"

"No more than fifteen," Conawago said, then joined Duncan in examining the four men on the ground. Two were dead, two had flesh wounds. "And these Hurons will flee for miles before wondering why they are not pursued. Get across the river with your wounded, find a cave for the night. No fire until you reach Fort Cumberland."