Eye of the Raven (17 page)

"But we are not killing surveyors. We will tell the British so."

"If I place a burning ember in your hand and tell you it is ice, which will you heed, your hand or your ear? Someone is making it appear that the Iroquois are killing the surveyors. If they succeed you will return home with empty hands, Skanawati dead, and the covenant chain shattered."

The two chiefs spoke with each other in low, worried tones. "Shamokin," Old Belt finally announced. "The Frenchman you seek is in Shamokin."

Duncan spent another half hour in search of the magistrate, who had ridden forward to hurry the convoy along. When he finally came upon Brindle's large black mare, his nephew was leading it. Felton explained that his uncle had joined a group of teamsters trying to hoist a heavy wagon to shift a broken wheel.

"Impossible," the magistrate replied when Duncan explained his proposal. "I will not surrender escaped slaves to you. And I will not let you force us into greater difficulties. Already the treaty hangs by a thread, the Virginians ready to steal away Skanawati to hang him, the Iroquois ready to attack them if they try. I will not entertain your fantasy that some broader conspiracy is afoot."

"Only Mokie need go with us. Let Mr. Hadley accompany us so that you can tell the Virginians she is in the custody of a member of the Burke family."

"Us?"

"Van Grut and Conawago will come with me."

"Mr. Hadley is an official record keeper of the treaty proceedings. And of the trial."

"You will take nearly a week to reach Lancaster at the speed of these wagons, more days to organize the proceedings. Give us fast horses to get to the river and we can meet you there with no disturbance to your schedule."

"I will not have you destroy my treaty over a few rumors," Brindle replied in an insistent tone.

"The government of this colony cannot make light of this trial. You know it will need to be precise, correct in every detail, if you are to carry out justice and still maintain relations with the Iroquois. Letting us go shows them that Europeans are trying to get to the bottom of this affair. Do not forget I can offer the precision of science in my report."

Brindle looked at Duncan with new interest but said nothing.

"Of course," Duncan continued, "a scientific expert is duty bound to tell the complete story. I will speak of another murder, at a different boundary tree, exhibiting the same method. Hanging one man for one act in the drama will solve nothing. The Iroquois will be wrathful, as will the Virginians. When the truth reaches Philadelphia you won't find a surveyor ready to set foot in the wilderness for years to come. And when the treaty is ruined the news will be passed on to the king and the Parliament, to the proprietor," he added, referring to the heir of the godlike William Penn. "You will have single-handedly brought to pass the worst interruption in relations with the Iroquois since the covenant chain was formed over a century ago."

For the first time since Duncan had known him he saw heat on the Quaker's face. He had gone too far. "You are insolent, McCallum! A feral Scotsman does not dictate affairs of state!" As Brindle fixed Duncan with an angry gaze his nephew rode up, leading the magistrate's horse.

"The Scottish highlands were scoured clean of resistance in but a few short years," Duncan shot back. "The Pennsylvania wilds and the western forest are vastly bigger. It will take twenty, maybe thirty years to clean them out if the Iroquois fight back. Thousands will die. Expansion of your province will be a distant dream if you alienate the tribes. Fort Pitt will be gone in a day if they choose to attack."

"The biggest threat to our treaty conference is you yourself, Mr. McCallum. I should have heeded Major Latchford's warnings and banned you from our company." Brindle paused. "Before we left Ligonier the major informed me he had sent a dispatch rider to Philadelphia with written inquiries about you."

Brindle mounted, but before riding away he gestured Felton on and turned back to Duncan. "For many weeks Mr. Bythe has been investigating the matters that so upset you. He is fully capable of reconciling the facts to appease the tribes. The tribes will see that we of Philadelphia are their true friends, and the army can stop troubling itself."

"The army?" Duncan asked uneasily.

"You cannot use a smith's hammer against the hornet when it stings."

"Sir?"

"The army is incapable of dealing with stealth, with spies. Bythe knows the tribes, and the nature of the war. It was not by coincidence he was sent to run the provincial outpost at Pitt. He has been collecting evidence of French saboteurs. And if you breathe a word of it I will have you in chains."

"The best chance the French have now is to turn the Iroquois against us," Duncan observed.

"I am painfully aware that if we lose the Iroquois nations the bloodbath will last a decade. There are hundreds of brave young families on the frontier. Many years ago I had the misfortune to arrive at a frontier village just after a raid. There was but one sobbing old woman left, twenty others hacked to pieces, several of them my own relatives. She said there was no warning, not even a barking dog. She said they just rose up out of the ground, sent by the devil himself." Brindle's voice trailed off, as though he was revisiting the horror of that day. After a moment he turned and spoke in a near whisper. "Bythe found a French spy among us."

"Here in the convoy?" Duncan asked in alarm. "How could he know?"

"The man's a n'er do well, a Delaware who sometimes mingles with the army scouts. Bythe saw him carrying the rifle of Captain Burke, his initials carved into the stock. He fled to the north when Bythe tried to press for an explanation."

Duncan glanced about, looking for the sturdy Quaker. "Sir, I pray you. Let me speak to Bythe," he urged. "I will gladly assist him."

"He is gone, since before dawn. He sat with your friend Van Grut and went through his journal last night. Afterward he asked for a small, sharp knife and said he knew what had to be done now."

It was nearly noon, and the two of them were sitting on a ledge rock watching the convoy descend onto a river valley floor when suddenly Conawago pointed out a mounted figure galloping from the east. Even from the distance they could make out the scarlet uniform of a military dispatch rider. The soldier did not gallop past the head of the caravan as expected but reined to a halt, speaking with the lead teamsters.

"Let us go, Duncan," his friend said. "It will not be welcome news for us." There was a boundary tree they meant to investigate, not more than a mile away, at one of the places where the Warriors Path ran close to the road. Conawago had pointed out the likely location, close to the head of the river, where the road made a sharp horseshoe curve beneath a narrow waterfall.

But Duncan kept watching. The messenger was clearly seeking out Brindle. He looked to the big Conestoga wagon with its escort of McGregor's squad and braves. The Virginians, not far ahead of the wagon, were carrying their muskets in front of them, as if ready for action. The night before, mischief had been afoot in their camp, with flour sacks slit open, shoes cut apart, dirt thrown into the frizzen pans of muskets. Their patience with Quaker justice was growing thin. Duncan was gripped with foreboding, and a new helplessness. None of them wanted his help, none seemed to sense the explosion of violence that he was certain approached.

"We have other business in the forest," Conawago reminded him, as if now proposing to abandon the convoy entirely.

Duncan sighed in frustration, then rose and turned toward the north. With a few steps off the road he could be back in the life he had grown to love, roaming the forest with the serene old Indian, who still had so much to teach him.

Suddenly frantic cries rose up from the valley floor. Every wagon stopped. From front and back men were running toward the center of the convoy.

Conawago pulled at Duncan's arm, then saw the determined expression on his companion's face and grimaced. "Ten minutes, no more," he said, and he gestured Duncan down the road.

They found Brindle sitting on a log by the stream that tumbled from the cliff above in a waterfall at least thirty feet high. The army dispatch rider had joined McGregor in pushing back the onlookers that were for some reason gathering.

The magistrate gestured sternly with the envelope he held. "I have orders to arrest you," he declared in a hollow voice as Duncan approached. "One of Philadelphia's leading citizens has sworn out a warrant against you.

"Philadelphia?" Duncan asked in disbelief.

"Do not dishonor me, McCallum, by pleading ignorance of your indenture to Lord Ramsey." Brindle seemed strangely weary, as if he hadn't the strength to rise. "There is a bounty on your head of thirty pounds. What, pray tell, did you do to him?"

Before replying Duncan gauged the distance to the thicket at the base of the cliff, taking a step closer to it as he eyed the soldiers. "I caused the loss of his New York estate. I caused his daughter to sever ties with him."

"The bounty is greater than any I have ever heard, even for a murderer."

"I wounded Ramsey's pride," Duncan said, knowing that had been his greatest crime of all.

Duncan now saw something unexpected in Brindle's eyes as he looked up. It appeared to be despair. He realized the Quaker was struggling to control his emotions. "But divine Providence has other plans," the magistrate slowly said.

Duncan hesitated, not certain he had heard correctly. "I'm sorry?"

Even when Brindle pointed at the center of the waterfall Duncan did not comprehend, did not at first grasp the oddly rhythmic movement of the round rock in the center of the current, not until Van Grut, shielding his eyes from the sun, gave a gasp of alarm.

Duncan stepped out of the sunlight and looked up again at the strange shape in the waterfall. It was Henry Bythe, the magistrate's brother-in-law. His body, thrown into the stream above, had been caught in the rocks in its descent so that the head protruded out of the rushing water. Wedged there, buffeted by the cascade, the dead Quaker was nodding at them.

"Go," the magistrate instructed Duncan in a haunted voice. "Go to Shamokin and bring me back your terrible truth."

HE PENNSYLVANIA WILDERNESS unfolded mile after mile, the steep, repetitive ridges finally yielding to the broad Susquehanna, the vast river that had served as the region's north-south thoroughfare for centuries. They paddled relentlessly now through the shallow waters, past the river's hundreds of tiny wooded islands, their canoes aimed like arrows at the heart of the Iroquois nation.

In his infrequent rests from the paddle Duncan found himself gazing at the silent, determined men in breechcloths who accompanied them. When the others had met Duncan at the boundary tree above the waterfall, where he studied its freshly cut symbols, Van Grut had explained that Conawago had adamantly refused Brindle's offer of Pennsylvania militia as an escort. The old Iroquois chiefs had a suggestion more to Conawago's liking. Johantty and the young Onondagas who had assaulted Duncan, only to later be transfixed by his piping, had intercepted them an hour later, leading them back onto the Forbes Road ahead of the convoy, where Felton waited with fresh horses. The bucks seemed to have aged somehow, grown more solemn, the rough ways displayed earlier replaced by a wary determination. Their elders had spoken with them, and now they were on a path of war against an unseen enemy.

"You run with death," Brindle's nephew had warned Duncan as he handed over the horses. "Sleep with one eye open if you value your hair. Henry Bythe died because he did not understand the depths of the treachery afoot."

Duncan studied the wary way Felton watched their escort. "Surely you do not suspect these Iroquois now. Bythe was convinced it was the French behind the murders."

"And what got him killed was his failure to see that the line between the two has blurred. The Iroquois lie between us and the French. More than a few are married into French families. Skanawati is Iroquois," Felton reminded Duncan. The Quaker paused to watch the cloud of dust as the others trotted away. "Shamokin is a nest of vipers. What do you hope to find there?"