War Path (28 page)

“But if the Seneca and Huron will join with us now, then not only will you receive all that I have promised, but all that Fort Edward holds will also be yours. The guns, the women and children for slaves, even if they march out under a white flag, I will hand them over to you.” Barbarat thrust his sword into the center of Fort Edward for emphasis. The hilt swayed in the air, the brass hilt gleaming. “What say you?” He looked up at Atoan and the other war chiefs who at first seemed to be staring at the colonel. Then he realized they were staring past him, at someone else entirely. The French officer became aware of an almost unearthly stillness. Even the voices in the hills had ceased. He slowly turned. And stood face-to-face with John Stark.

“Atoan!” asked Barbarat. His voice rang out. “What man is this who walks through your braves unheeded and stands before my own troops and no one lifts a hand against him … this man who defies us all?” The Frenchman was a lot of things. But he wasn't afraid. Why should he be? The intruder, however
formidable
, was ringed by marines and red-skinned warriors. No. One gesture from Lucien Barbarat and this churl would breathe his last.
“Qui ëtesvous
?”

Atoan met the Ranger's stare. He could scarcely believe his eyes. What had brought him here? Perhaps the trail had been set for him long ago, for them both. And Atoan knew fear then, not for his life so much as that of his people, his son. He spied Kasak as the brash young warrior reached for the dirk in his belt. The Grand Sachem stepped in front of his son. “It is the beast,” he told the Frenchman. Atoan grudgingly tore his gaze from the Ranger and checked the shrouded hills. The stillness, why now? And what were his sentries doing as the long hunter approached? And why did the Old Ones no longer speak? He looked again at the man with the crooked nose and the flashing eyes, this man in Ranger garb. He was big, he was ugly, he had dignity, and he wasn't about to die. “It is Stark.”

Barbarat's eyes widened with recognition at the name. “At last we meet.”

“At last,” the Ranger replied.

“And I am …”

“I know who you are.”

“Indeed,” said Barbarat. “Then you are either a brave man or quite mad. Which is it, Monsieur?” The colonel retrieved his sword and turned once more, with the flames of the council fire between them. Dried wood crackled, sent a column of sparks coruscating upward from the fiery bed. The officer glanced about, swung the sword up and pointed the blade at the intruder. “And where did you come from,
Jean le fou.”

“I bring you a message from Fort William Henry.”

Colonel Lucien Barbarat frowned, pursed his lips. From the ruins? The Ranger was indeed mad. “What message?”

“This,” said Stark. And shot the colonel between the eyes.

36

“Let them have it …!”

E
verything happened at once. The long rifle made a deafening sound that shattered the tableau of red men and white. Barbarat flew backwards, trailing an arc of blood from his shattered skull. The officer was dead before his shoulders hit the ground. Stark tossed the brass powder flask into the campfire and dove to his left, hurling himself like a human battering ram into the startled warriors. In that same instant, the French marines closest to the center of the firelight, seeing their colonel murdered before their eyes, opened fire in Stark's direction.

The fusillade missed its mark but killed several of the Hurons as they tried to intercept the Ranger. The powder flask exploded like a thunderclap, its bright flash and choking cloud of smoke further obscured the scene. The Hurons in turn opened up on the marines and killed several of them where they stood.

Atoan dove for his war club and tried to end the melee. Kasak yelped and fell forward. A bullet from a French musket pierced his groin. Rifle fire erupted from the shadows, a great and terrible volley that dropped several of the Seneca and Abenaki warriors on the fringe of the council fire. Atoan instantly grasped what was happening. Stark had tricked them. He shouted for his warriors to turn and meet this new threat as the Rangers came charging out of the shadows, horns blaring, shouting war cries, firing as they came.

The marines, thinking they were under attack from all sides, poured fire into their allies. Atoan leaped among them, his massive war club smashing skulls and shattering bone. He had seen his son fall at their hands and he was merciless in his outrage. He ground them under, shattered their formation, then when they fled before him he shouted for his warriors to head for the hillside to the rear. They would make their stand on the Pass Through Rock.

It was a hellish sight. There was panic and gunfire, flashing tomahawks, the thud of slugs puncturing flesh, of blades slicing flesh, the crack of war clubs shattering skulls. The night air was awash with screams and moans, pleas, curses and animalistic howls. The Rangers struck like a raging torrent. The warriors before them tried to stem the onslaught. But to no avail.

Stark threw off the bodies pinning him to the ground, clutched a marine by the throat who tried to club him, the Frenchman succumbing to that iron grip. Stark used him as a shield as rifles were pointed in his direction. Lead slugs thwacked into the dying man. Two warriors charged forward. Stark hurled his human shield in their faces, knocked the men off balance. Stark sprang forward, his own tomahawk hacking left and right felling his attackers like stalks of wheat. Another group of marines spied that broad expanse of shoulders and chest and charged forward, snapped up their muskets. Stark turned and faced this makeshift firing squad, stared down half a dozen gun barrels. He lunged for them, determined to sell his life as dearly as possible.

A terrible roar sounded behind the marines, shattering their ranks. Men fell to the ground, writhing in agony, blood seeping from a terrible assortment of wounds left by the spray of lead shot from Sam Oday's blunderbuss. Those who survived Oday's attack had to answer to Stark. They did not last long. Oday grinned and began to reload.

“Well met, Sam Oday,” Stark said.

“Saving my own skin,” he replied. “I'll not be the one to answer to Molly should you lose your topknot this night.”

Robert Rogers arrived, with part of the column. The warriors were breaking for the hillsides. Rogers snapped off a shot and sent a man tumbling over before he could reach the line of trees. He reloaded as he approached. “Some signal!”

“Figured you wouldn't miss it,” Stark shouted back, taking up his own rifle once more. “C'mon.”

Benoit Turcotte stared down at the ruined features and the lifeless remains of what had once been Colonel Lucien Barbarat. The
voyageur
knelt by the officer, peered into those unseeing eyes.

“Now who will you hang,
mon Colonel?”
Turcotte asked. Leaning forward, he spit in the dead man's face.

Behind the
voyageur
, a mortally-wounded marine managed to prop himself up with one arm and with the other, trembling, raise his musket, take unsteady aim. Turcotte never heard the shot that killed him.

The surviving Seneca and Huron, with the remaining few marines who they eventually cut to pieces before disappearing into the forest, scattered from the valley, eager to quit these cursed hills. The Rangers were green devils and no doubt outnumbered them all, judging by the ferocity of their assault. It was better to flee and live to fight another day.

So Lost Arrow and Claws In The Water, the latter, gut shot and dying, abandoned the Abenaki to their fate. The two tribes departed together. For many hours the Huron and Seneca would keep to the same trail until they reached a place where it forked. Then the survivors were forced to make a decision. Despite Atoan's dreams of a confederacy, the two tribes split and chose to make their own way along the Great War Path.

Atoan, carrying his wounded son upon his shoulders, led a fighting retreat up the forested slope of the Pass Through Rock. His warriors darted from tree to bush and back to tree, firing as they went. The Grand Sachem hoped to thin the ranks of the
Anglais
before his own warriors reached the barren summit and were forced to fight with the cliff at their backs. Had he been contesting British regulars his plan might have succeeded. But these were Rangers and they fought from tree to tree, from rock to rock. It was as Atoan had always warned, the Rangers fought like the Abenaki themselves. Some of them died on that slope to be sure, but his own men also fell. And he had none to spare.

Gunfire blossomed orange in the night. Rifle and pistol fire reverberated up slope and down. Men cried in alarm, cried for their loved ones, sang their death chants, or simply grunted, groaned, and expired alone with their deaths.

Stark sighted on a patch of underbrush, squeezed off a round, was rewarded with a yelp of pain and the glimpse of a warrior staggering from cover. Tom Strode, the sergeant, fired his own rifle and the wounded man sank to his knees.

“Major Ransom would have had us marching in ranks with our bayonets fixed, if the lads of the Regiment were here,” he said, reloading.

Stark nodded. “And lost many a brave soul, I warrant you.”

“Yes,” Strode said, filing away in his mind all that he had seen this night.

The moonbeams filtered through the branches overhead, draped the slope in silver while acrid black clouds of powder smoke drifted through the fractured light. Stark crept forward. There was a violent exchange of gunfire off to his right.

The skirmish lasted but a few brief but intense seconds. He veered toward the sound and as the echoes faded, drew abreast of Locksley Barlow and a few other Rangers clustered around the base of a white pine. Moses Shoemaker sat with his back to the trunk, legs splayed out before him, blood seeping from his chest.

“No,” Stark whispered. “You Old Jehu, what have you gone and done?”

“Got myself killed, can't you see,” Moses snapped. He stared down at the wound. He heard a kind of whistle every time he breathed and pink froth formed around the ragged punctures in his hunting shirt.

“You had to take the lead,” Locksley said, his voice tight as he choked back tears. “It should have been me.” He glanced up at Stark “I never saw them, but he did. And shoved me down. Knelt on my back while he fired away. Bloody old fool.”

“Don't sass me, lad. I can still take your measure.” Moses grinned.

Stark checked the path ahead. Three Abenakis were sprawled in death in the baleful moonlight. Locksley and the others had avenged the old Indian fighter.

Moses looked past the men gathered by him, clutched a handful of soil, yellow pine nettles, a few blades of grass, and raised it to his lips.

“I died here,” he said. Moses Shoemaker held out his hand to show the others what he had learned. “That makes it mine.” His head sank to one side and he no longer saw his hand or the earth in his grasp.

37

A
toan, carrying his son draped across his shoulders, reached the cleared summit and turned to await the arrival of his warriors. He lowered Kasak to the ground. The young man would have a hard time fighting on one leg. The wisest course was for him to hide in the underbrush by the forest's edge.

“Kasak,” he said. “You cannot fight if you cannot stand. We must return to the trees and find a place for you to wait for the
Anglais
to leave.”

Atoan stared at his own beaded hunting shirt. The porcupine quills were matted with blood. And Kasak was not answering him, not even protesting his father's council. The Grand Sachem lowered the youth to the ground. Kasak made no sound and his arm dropped listlessly to his side.

Atoan stared unbelievingly at his son. He had no way of knowing the French musket ball that had passed through young man's groin, severed an artery. Kasak had bled to death while his father carried him out of harm's way. The war chief took the French dirk from his son's clenched fist, stood and stared at the knife, his gaze hardening as he fixed blame on the French blade and all it represented. He angrily hurled the weapon toward the trees with all his strength.

The Grand Sachem of the Abenaki walked to the edge of the cliff and stood, with his war club resting on his shoulder, soaked with Kasak's blood, and waited for the People of the White Pine to join him. At long last, he saw his warriors materialize out of the woods and started to call out but his cry died in his throat. It was John Stark flanked by Robert Rogers, Locksley Barlow, Tom Strode, Sam Oday, and a column of ragged, battle-weary men in war-torn green buckskins. Their faces were smeared with blood and gunsmoke, some were wounded, but all of them were ready to continue the fight. They would never stop. Atoan knew that now. And in that moment he glimpsed his own fate and those of his kind.

Stark held up his hand and motioned for the Rangers to remain where they were. Rogers started to object then held back, sensing rank had no place on this bluff. Stark crossed the summit, laying aside his rifle and his pistol, keeping only the tomahawk in his hand. He kept his eyes on the Abenaki warrior and did not underestimate him for a second.

“My son is dead,” said Atoan.

Stark had recognized the fallen man back where the Grand Sachem had laid his burden down. He thought of Moses Shoemaker, of Abel Page, of all the ones who had been lost.

“Many sons are dead. And daughters. Too many.”

“Yes,” Atoan replied. “Perhaps, just one more.”

“It doesn't have to end this way,” Stark said, standing as close as he dared to land's end. The waters below rippled and splashed among the jagged rocks.

“It always had to end this way,” Atoan said. “It was written in our stars.”

“Then let it be as when we once shared a fire, face-to-face, as men,” said Stark.

The Abenaki's white war paint was streaked with sweat and blood. The irony that he wore a mask of peace was not lost on the Grand Sachem. Somehow, it even seemed fitting, as if the gods had played one last trick on him.
“Kiwaskwek
…” Atoan muttered.