"You mean you can't afford to have a killing disrupt the treaty negotiations.
Latchford's eyes flared. "With the right report we can avoid a lengthy trial. And I will refrain from pressing those uncomfortable questions about you." He lifted the envelope and pointedly tapped its corner on his desk.
"The evidence does not say Conawago is the killer."
"You misunderstand. I require the medical expertise you demonstrated to me. I know you secretly examined the body. A vivid description of the wounds. A seasoning of Latin. Wounds made by a tomahawk, a knife, a club. I will officially connect them to the prisoner in my judicial findings. You say the condemned was trained by Jesuits. Obviously a French sympathizer. No one will begrudge us for dispatching another enemy of the king. You were an eyewitness. Perhaps you are ready to reconsider what you saw. Give me the report I need and you will be back in your forsaken wilderness by nightfall."
"I will not help to hang him."
Latchford made a gesture at the sentry. "Then I will place you in a cell where you can watch the old fool twist on his rope. After which you can rot for a few weeks until I write the report describing how you impersonated a ranger. It will give me time to build you a proper gibbet. Help me hang your Indian," the major spat, "or I will hang you."
CHAPTER THREE
Duncan had never truly walked in a forest before until he had walked with Conawago. The old Nipmuc had first taught him how to listen and smell, how to see things he had never seen before, how to move without disturbing the forest floor, but only after subjecting him to long hours of cleansing rituals. The grime of the European world had to be scoured from his skin, washed from his ears and nose, Conawago had insisted. The winter before, they had spent days on a remote mountain building an elaborate sweat lodge, then alternated between the lodge and a pool of icy water as the old Indian murmured to the spirits, staying up for hours each night to watch stars and meteors. Finally Conawago had stood at the edge of a high cliff and shouted up to the sky that this Scot from across the sea was ready for the gods to take notice of him.
The magic of those hours would dwell in Duncan's heart forever, and he embraced it again as he approached the murder scene, trying to clear his mind of the fear he felt for the old Nipmuc who lay, bleeding and broken, in Latchford's jail.
The earth around the scene of the murder had been pressed down with the shoes and moccasins of so many men it was impossible to make sense of the tracks. Duncan paused repeatedly, raising his hand for Van Grut and McGregor to halt as he studied the forest before them, straining to re-create in his mind's eye the scene as he and Conawago had found it. As McGregor took up a position as sentinel, Duncan showed Van Grut where the body had leaned against the big beech tree and pointed out the patch of darkened soil where Winston Burke's lifeblood had drained. The large nail that had pinned his hand was still in the tree, stained with blood its entire length.
"Suppose you are the murderer," Duncan said to Van Grut after pacing along the front of the tree, reconstructing the crime. He paused, considering the intense worry in the Dutchman's face. He had not hesitated when Van Grut had volunteered to join him, welcoming the pair of scientifically trained eyes, but now the Dutchman seemed to be having second thoughts. "You stupefy Burke with a blow of your hand ax to the head then drive the nail through his left hand to pin him to the tree before slashing the leg."
The Dutchman knelt and studied the spike. "Why a nail?"
It was a question Duncan had asked himself during the ride from the fort. Nails were precious commodities on the frontier, where structures were typically joined with wooden pegs, not iron. "I don't know," he admitted. "A sharpened peg would have worked, even a heavy locust thorn. Indians don't use nails."
"They steal from our forge all the time," McGregor corrected him, "use 'em to tip their battle axes, or for trade. Good as money back in their towns, I hear."
Duncan acknowledged the truth of the words with a grimace, then eased the nail out with the edge of his tomahawk, reminding himself that there were many across the sea who would use the metal as a talisman to ward off evil. But here the nail had done the work of the devil. Or had Burke been the devil to be fended off?
The head had an unusual crosshatch design. "Does your forge make this design on its nails?"
McGregor studied it and shook his head.
Other pieces of metal had figured in the death, Duncan reminded himself as he dropped the nail into his belt pouch beside the lump of copper from Burke's mouth. The nail. The gear. The copper. None had been required for the killing. The murderer had been acting on some broader stage. But to what purpose? he asked himself. The objects would have had meaning for someone. Which meant they were intended to convey a message from the killer.
Burke had been scouting, his cousin had insisted. Duncan found the explanation hard to believe, but certainly Burke had been alone and had left his camp before dawn. He reconstructed the scene in his mind's eye once more. Burke's britches and stockings had not shown the heavy dew damp of hard travel through the undergrowth, meaning he had arrived from the Forbes Road, no more than thirty minutes ahead of his men. There had been no fresh tracks on the trail or Conawago and Duncan would have noticed them. Burke had turned off the road up the Warriors Path and gone to the massive beech tree that marked the trail, as if seeking it out.
He looked back at the Dutchman. Van Grut's face was clouding with worry.
Duncan had not forgotten the words first spoken by Latchford. Why this particular Virginian, why this particular day? The major had left out another important question. "Why this particular tree?" Duncan asked.
"It is a grand specimen, huge." The Dutchman eyed the road as if suddenly thinking of bolting. McGregor stepped closer to him.
"I've seen larger," Duncan replied as he studied the forest, slowly stepping around the tree, examining now the worn earth and the long shadow that snaked off into the forest. The Warriors Path had been used for centuries by tribesmen traveling to the south and west. He recalled how in their own journey Conawago had led Duncan off it to follow the Forbes Road, which ran near at several points. But none of those other intersections had such a tree. He looked up at the back of it, the north side, and froze.
Over Duncan's head were rows of carved symbols, starting with a line of stick figures and shapes such as Duncan had seen on message belts used by the Iroquois. But here the figures had been carved into the silver bark instead of woven with purple and white beads. The figures of Indians carrying tomahawks were a warning sign. The trail wasn't called the Warriors Path for nothing. Below the signs was another sign, carved not so long before, and not by Indian hands. It was an I and a V, a Roman numeral four. Around the side, to the east, were more signs, five recently carved geometric shapes, squares and right angles, some with small pieces of bark taken out of their centers like dots, not always in the same location on the shape. The first seemed to be a U, squared at the bottom, the next a right angle, tilted so it aimed at the center of the U, the third a right angle with its corner at the left top, a dot tucked into the corner.
He spied curled pieces of bark beneath the signs and knelt, lifting one, bending it, smelling it. The pieces were fresh, not yet dried out, excised no more than a day before. Someone had carved the signs after Burke had been killed, perhaps as it happened. The valuable buttons had not all been cut from Burke's shirt, but the symbols had been carefully carved, as if they were more important than the silver.