Very, very carefully I stepped back. When out of sight, I turned swiftly and awakened Yance. Accustomed to trouble and knowing me, he was instantly awake and alert. He moved to awaken Henry, and I went to the girls.
Gently I touched Diana’s shoulder and put a finger across my lips. Her eyes flared open; there was an instant until she realized, and then she moved quietly to awaken Carrie. My gestures toward the enemy camp were enough to warn her.
Swiftly, quietly we moved away through the woods, going directly away from their camp. Somehow we made it, or seemed to.
The leaves were wet with dew, or perhaps there had been a whisper of rain during the night, but there was no sound as we moved quickly along. That they would find our camp was without question, for once they started to look about for dry wood, they would undoubtedly come upon it. The first problem was distance, the second to leave no trail, yet it was distance of which I thought at first.
Max Bauer had not seemed to be with them, so perhaps the two groups had not come together. Or it might be that Bauer was too shrewd to allow himself to be found with the men who had actually been holding the girls. And it was he who worried me most, for I doubted the tracking skill of Lashan or Vern.
“If aught goes amiss,” I warned Diana, “go at once to Samuel Maverick. From what you have said, he seems a good man and a solid one. Go to him, tell him all, and trust to his judgment. If he knows your father, he will get word to him.”
The war party of Indians, I believed, had gone off to the north of us, raiding some other Indian people, I suspected. Bauer should be close by, but I suspected he was now behind us, as was Lashan. With luck—and mentally I crossed my fingers—we should have a clear way to Shawmut.
We moved well through the long morning, and when it came to high sun, we were upon the banks of a goodly stream, one flowing north into that great river that I assumed to be what the Indians called the Merrimack or something of the sound.
“This must be that river called the Musketaauid,” Diana said. “Father came once to its shores and fished here while with other men who looked for land for the future.”
The river worried me. It was a good hundred yards wide and perhaps more, and we had to cross it. Yance and I could swim, and no doubt Henry could, but I doubted the girls could, for it was not often a woman has the chance to learn, and Carrie was young.
Leaving Henry with them, Yance went downstream, and I turned up, for well we knew that Indians often conceal their canoes along the banks after traveling, hiding them against the next crossing. There were places where canoes were left for years, used by whoever came and left hidden on one side or the other.
We found no boat, it not being our lucky day, but Yance came upon several logs lying partly in and out of the water. They were of modest size, and there were others nearby.
Choosing dry logs, we found several of the proper length and bound them together with vines. The river moved with incredible slowness, and while we worked, we studied what currents we could see so as to know how best to control our crossing. Meanwhile, the girls ate huckleberries picked from bushes along the shore.
When the raft was complete, and a pitifully small thing it was, we had the two girls climb aboard, and with them we put our muskets and powder horns.
Henry came suddenly from the woods. “They come now!” he said.
“Yance?” He looked up at my question. “You and Henry. Get on with it. I’ll wait a bit.”
I kept one pistol with an extra charge of powder and ball laid out close to hand. And I had the bow and the arrows. They shoved off. Yance being a powerful swimmer, I knew he’d do his part, but Henry proved just as good, and the two of them, with tow lines, started swimming for the far bank, letting what little current there was help them along.
They weren’t more than a dozen yards out when somebody yelled, and I heard crashing in the brush. The first one I sighted was the fat one, and he slid to a halt and lifted his musket to fire. It was no more than thirty yards, and I wasted no lead on him but put an arrow into his brisket.
His musket went off as he staggered, the ball going into the air, and he lost hold on his musket and grabbed the arrow. It was buried deep, and I saw him tugging as he fell.
Slinging my quiver to my back, I took up the pistol. There was more crashing in the brush, and somebody called a question. The fat man had fallen out of sight behind some brush, but I could hear him groaning there.
Suddenly a tall, thin man appeared in view, looking about. I lifted the pistol, but he saw me and dropped from sight. A quick glance showed me the raft was a good sixty yards into the stream and no longer a very good target, as the girls were lying flat, and you could see nothing of Yance or Henry but their heads and occasionally the flash of an arm.
There was more movement in the brush, and I took a chance and fired at the sound, knowing I’d best get going. Then I hastily reloaded, and taking the pistol in hand, ran along the shore until I reached a bend large enough to give me some cover. Then I tied my pistol to me and went into the water. When I was a dozen yards out, I went under and swam some twenty good strokes before coming up for air.
I was downstream of them, and I heard a shot but no other sound, and when I cleared water again, I turned my head for a look back, and there were three men on the shore, two of them getting ready to swim and a third running along the bank looking for me. He spotted me just as I took a breath and went under, but I changed direction and went downstream and swam a good thirty strokes before I came up again, just shy of midstream.
Looking back, I could just barely see what I believed was the raft, and it was close to shore. I swam toward the bank then and came out on the bank among some deadfalls. There was no sign of the raft or of my people, but I could see at least two men swimming.
Shaking the water off my pistol, I swore softly, bitterly. I had no more powder with me, and my bowstring was wet. All that remained was my tomahawk and knife.
Taking a quick look along the shore again, I went into the trees and started toward where my path should join theirs. There was a thick stand of maple with occasional oak and in spots a pine tree or two. Nobody looked to have wandered these woods, but there was not too much brush, and I moved quickly, running through the trees.
My one thought was to rejoin Yance and the rest, and what followed was brought on by pure carelessness. I jumped a deadfall, leaped up to another, and ran along the top of it for thirty feet or so, then dropped to the earth and broke through the brush and found myself looking into the end of a musket held by a grinning redheadea man with a scar across his nose.
He has another one there now, for my reaction was instantaneous. Seeing the musket, I threw up a hand and grasped it, jamming it back into the man’s face. He staggered, but another leaped on my back, and I went down into the leaves, bucked hard, and almost threw the man off. I came to my knees, swinging a fist into the nearest face, for there were three at least, and then I lunged up with a man still clinging to my back.
A broken-off tree, felled by some wind, was near, and I slammed myself back against the tree and a stub of a broken branch that thrust out from it. The man on my back screamed and lost his grip, and I lunged away from him and into the brush. Somebody shouted and swore, a gun blasted behind me, and the lead hit bark from a tree near my head, but I was running again, weaving a way through the forest that would show them no target for shooting among all those tree trunks.
That I was a good runner served me well, for I had run much in the depth of forests before this, and leaping some obstructions and using others, I ran as never before, thanking the good Lord and all my ancestry for the long legs of me.
I had escaped by merest chance and because I had come upon them almost as suddenly as they upon me, and they were ill prepared for what followed. Fear helped me much, and I ran, bearing off toward the river again and hoping my brother and those with him were already to the east of me.
When I slowed down, I felt for knife and tomahawk. Both were with me. My quiver had been thrust around and was still across my shoulders with my bow. Luckily he who leaped upon me had wanted my throat and nothing less.
Suddenly I came upon the tracks of Yance and the others and made haste to scatter leaves across them and to drop a dead branch along the trail as though it had always been there. Then I walked away into the woods.
As the crow flies, it was likely no more than fifteen miles from where we now were to Shawmut, but by the route they would take and that I must take, it would be no less than twenty. In the wilderness there is no such thing as traveling in a straight line, for one turns aside for trees, rocks, embankments, cliffs, and what not until one may cover half again the distance a straight line would require. Also, such diversions, no matter how small, can lead one far astray unless the traveler is alert.
The land over which I moved was strange to me but very familiar. Strange in that I had never before travelea over it but familiar in that it was wilderness country, and in the wilderness I was ever at home.
My moccasins made almost no sound on the damp leaves, and in most places I could, by twisting and turning, avoid the dry whisk of leaves and branches as they brushed my clothes. My buckskins, stained by travel and by lying on grass and leaves, merged well with the foliage and tree trunks through which I moved.
What worried me most of all was that for the time I was virtually unarmed except for combat at close quarters. If seen, I should have to use every skill to avoid offering a target, and among these woods were enemies who knew every trick of woodcraft.
When there was a path, I ran, taking the usual easy pace of the Indian or woodsman in the days before horses were commonly used, for at this time there were no horses in the Massachusetts Bay area and few elsewhere aside from the Spanish colonies of the far south. Our own horses we had left in a secluded pasture where Macklin could from time to time attend to them.
I had no food, yet often had I gone without food for several days at a time and could endure. Nonetheless, I kept a wary eye for huckleberries or whatever the forest might offer and soon came upon a thick patch at the edge of a meadow.
There were bear tracks about, but I saw none, although it was a likely place for them, and I picked and ate for nearly an hour before I started on. Huckleberries were tasty enough, but I had need of meat.
Suddenly coming upon two red deer and having a goodly chance at the one, I measured the distance with my eye and let fly with my tomahawk. Many a time had I hit such small marks as the end of my thumb, but this time the fates were not with me, for the unkind beast turned his head, and I missed. The deer ran off, and I went hungry to my tomahawk and returned it to my belt, mumbling a few unpleasantries the while.
No longer running, for I had come into an area of low hills, scattered rocks, and much fallen timber, I went carefully. It is a thing a man must forever guard, that he not twist an ankle badly or break a leg, for to be down and helpless is often to die. There was no sound but the wind in the leaves, no movement but small animals or birds. It had become suddenly warmer, and I tried for a look at the sky, but the foliage was thick, and I could see naught but patches of low gray cloud.
Several times I sat to think, to try to imagine where Yance and the others might be, but all I could surmise was that they were north of me and but a few miles off, yet I hoped our enemies were following me instead of them, and, rising, I went on.
Of Shawmut I knew nothing. It was not a settlement, merely a place, and of it I knew only that two or three men lived there. That it was close by to the sea and that a fair harbor was near, I did know, and some among those to whom I had talked at Jamestown or Williamsburg had suggested it might in some while become an important place. Such things are commonly said of this place or that along a coast newly discovered, always to be taken with a grain of salt.
Throughout the sultry afternoon I plodded on, lonely and a bit weary, my thoughts forever returning to Mistress Macklin, from whom I tried in vain to draw them away, at first by force and then by trickery. Neither would suffice.
Why should I think of her? I scarcely knew her. A likely maid, of course. Downright beautiful, when it came to that, and a lass of some poise and presence, and no more of a witch than most girls of her age, who are all up to some trickery or other.
Yet who was I to talk of women? I knew less of them than of deer or beaver, and they were much more chancy things from all I had heard.
Noelle was but a child when she left for England, so the little I knew of women was by observing the wife of my brother or those of my friends, and they were not helpful. A woman who has trapped her game has a different way about her than one who is still on the stalk.
My ignorance of women I covered very well by a seeming indifference and by keeping my opinions to myself, most of which, had they been expressed, might well have been wrong. It was easy enough to see why the young men of the Cape Ann area might be doubtful of Diana, for she had a disconcerting way of looking at a man.
Yet aside from her beauty there was much in her to admire, for she was a quietly capable person who did not scream, faint, or cry so far as I had seen. She looked matters in the face and did something about them, and my mother had been such a woman, and Lila even more so.
The Indian girls I had seen among the Cherokees or Catawbas and the white girls I had met in Jamestown were much alike. They all knew how to move, to sit and to bend to show their figures to the best advantage, and I was used to that. Diana, with a better figure than any of them, did nothing of the kind, or did she? In some more subtle fashion? It worried me that she seemed innocent of guile, that she seemed only concerned with what was at hand. So I came to avoid her, while thinking about her.
Yet I was being foolish and very vain. Why should such a girl think to use such wiles on such as I? Who was I, after all, but a tall young woodsman from a strange wilderness to the south, a man without any of the graces of which I had heard women speak.
I was much too serious. Yance was full of laughter and fun and great at dancing. Kane O’Hara, who had won a Spanish wife, was a gifted talker, a storyteller, and a man with a ready smile and eyes that twinkled with merriment. Jeremy, my father’s friend and Lila’s husband, was every inch a gentleman. He carried himself with style and knew much of the world. People, and women especially, listened when he spoke.
And I? I talked little and at the dances sat along the wall and watched, more at home in the forest than among people. No doubt I would live alone forever, for what woman would find me attractive? Who would want a tall man with high cheekbones and a face like a blunted wedge who knew nothing but hunting and tracking?
I would think of Diana no longer.