Teague’s only answer was to launch a violent kick at Duncan.
Duncan hovered just out of reach. “Normally a man wouldn’t bleed to death from that incision but more of that could make it so. Were you at Edentown?”
“He’ll kill you McCallum. You’ll be dead in a week.”
Duncan stepped forcefully down on Teague’s leg and leaned over him with the blade. “Did you bring the canoe for the murderers’ escape? Who were the men leaving in the canoe when Bricklin was arriving?”
“Kincaid and Hobart. Hobart wears spectacles. I waited at the landing for them.”
“Where are they going?”
“South. The promised land. Galilee.”
“You mean Virginia.”
Teague grinned despite the blood on his lips. “He said he was building up a powerful black hunger. That’s what he calls it. For the black rum on black nights lying with black girls.”
“Why would they leave you?”
Teague stared down at a little pool of blood on the back of his hand.
Duncan asked again. When the Irishman wouldn’t answer he laid the blade along his temple. “Another couple inches, Teague, and you know what will happen? Your skin will start collapsing, sliding down your skull. What a mess. A good doctor might sew it up but it will never be the same. Your face will look like one of those lumpy deerskin balls the Iroquois use in lacrosse. Children will flee at the sight of you. Women will slam their doors and windows.”
“Bricklin wants to know what you took from that dead man on the river.” The Irishman nodded toward the wooden box they had carried from the river. “But mostly he needs the box back.”
Duncan paused, surprised. “Mr. Franklin’s fossils?”
“If you got in the way he said he didn’t mind if you was hurt. You were never supposed to have survived that snake.”
“Get the fossils and then what?”
“Deliver them to Mr. Franklin’s house then watch who comes for them.”
Duncan assumed Rush had pulled Analie away to shelter behind his tree, but she had only gone for a better weapon before charging Teauge again. She slammed a broken limb as thick as her arm into the Irishman’s ribs, raising a sharp cracking noise. The Irishman groaned and sank once more into unconsciousness. “Like you said about Captain Woolford,” she explained, looking up at Duncan. “A man can’t move fast with broken ribs.” She dropped the stick, clasped her hands together, and smiled like a choirgirl.
Duncan turned to Rush. “Why the fossils?” he demanded. “Are men dying because of fossils?” Rush stared, dumbfounded, at Teague. Duncan grabbed him and shook him by the shoulders. “Why do the killers care about them? Why does Franklin want them?”
“They are of great intellectual curiosity,” Rush said. “Mr. Franklin is a great natural philosopher. For him and his committee.”
Duncan stared at him in frustration. He was the messenger who never understood his messages. Duncan opened the box again, puzzling once more over the contents. Surely men weren’t dying for some ancient petrifications. He noticed now a sheet of paper that had fallen to the side of the box. It was addressed not to Franklin but To My Noble Friends, followed by three Latin words, Audentes fortuna juvat, and signed, with a flourish familiar to Duncan, Sir William. Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune assists the daring.
He knelt and unwrapped each from its covering of old news journal pages, laying them in a line on a piece of shale. An acorn-sized snail, the oversized louse that Rush had called a trilobite, a fern, a fish, a worm, the foot of what looked like a lizard, and a huge triangular black tooth, nearly as big as his palm. Was there a message in them? Did they constitute some sort of rebus?
He turned to retrieve the paper wrappings and paused, staring at the first page he lifted as it hung in the air. Against the morning sky he could see tiny holes. He picked up another sheet, straightening it against his leg, and held it aloft. More holes, not random but in lines. He checked other sheets quickly, confirming they all had the tiny pinpricks. Each, he quickly discovered, was squarely under a letter or number of the text. He ripped off the back of a sheet, showing no holes, and pulled out his writing lead.
G, A, L, he began recording, writing the letters over each hole. The five papers each had different letters or numbers indicated by the tiny holes. After several minutes he had five clusters of letters and numbers. Galilee, said the first, then World’s End, Runners missing, and Massnyconnri.
“I don’t understand,” Rush said over his shoulder.
“Messages, Benjamin. The fossils are the perfect cover. Of course some natural philosophers in Philadelphia would be interested in them, and Sir William is a friend of several. The papers would seem to be just trash.”
Duncan pointed to the last group of letters. “It puts me in mind of a native name.”
Rush stared intensely at the letters then grinned and, borrowing Duncan’s lead, drew lines between letter groupings. “Just abbreviations. Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and-”
“Rhode Island,” Duncan finished. “Why would Sir William think names of colonies must be kept secret?”
“I told you. I am not trusted with the details,” Rush replied in a self-pitying tone. “Apparently all I do is lure people to their deaths.”
As Rush repacked the fossils, Duncan lifted Teague’s water gourd and poured it over the Irishman’s head. Teague woke up spitting, then grimaced and clutched his ribs.
“Where is this Galilee? Is that where Kincaid and Hobart are going?”
“South. All I know is south. Down the wagon road. They had me arrange fast horses for them at Harris’s Landing.”
Duncan lifted the scalpel again.
“Sotweed country,” Teague hastily added. “They work out of the sotweed country.”
Duncan stared at the man, trying to decide if he spoke the truth, then finally turned his back on the Irishman.
Teague seemed to take it as a sign he would not die that day. “We took three at once, me and the boys. They were sleeping, under the full moon. We each knelt by one and then howled like wolves. As they sat up their throats were thrust into our blades. Cut their own throats, ye might say.”
Duncan’s hand was shaking again. He dropped the scalpel on top of Rush’s kit for fear of what he might do.
Teague’s face became a hideous mask as he grinned through the streaks of blood. “’Course the easiest way is to just get a buck drunk. Spend a shilling on a demijohn of rum and harvest a five-pound hank of hair by the end of the night.” Blood trickled into his eyes and with a wince he shook his head to clear them. “I’ll kill you, McCallum. I’ll find you and kill you slow, that’s my vow to you.”
“And I’ll make a vow to you Teague,” Duncan returned. “If I ever find you with another scalp, if I hear you’ve taken another scalp, if I ever hear you are trading in scalps or even bragging about killing natives I will find you. I will tie you down in the forest, and cut open your belly. The wolves will take a day or two to finish you.”
“Leave me like this and they’ll finish me here.”
Duncan pulled Rush to his feet and shoved him toward Teague. “This is Dr. Rush of Philadelphia. He has taken a vow to help the injured. He will sew you up with his fine silk thread and get you to the landing.” Duncan reached for his pack and rifle. The frightened young doctor did not protest. “In fact he will care for you all the way to Philadelphia, just a doctor nursing a man who suffered a terrible accident on the frontier.”
Teague spat blood at Duncan. “The Indians are dying. It’s our job to help them on their way. People ain’t safe with them in the world.”
A catlike snarl rose behind Duncan. Analie charged past him and collided with Teague. It happened so quickly Teague simply stared for a moment in confusion, then more blood streamed onto his shoulder. She extended a wrinkled bit of flesh toward him like a trophy and the Irishman spattered blood across the clearing as he shook his head and roared. The French choirgirl had sliced off his ear.