He turned to see Van Grut on a log, pulling a journal from the linen bag that never seemed to leave his shoulder, then extracting a writing lead from inside his waistcoat.
"You knew about this tree," Duncan said to the Dutchman.
It was not a question.
Van Grut seemed strangely shamed. "I suspected. I was not certain," he said, his tone one of apology.
Duncan approached the Dutchman. "You were paying off debts at the fort," he said in an accusing tone. "Burke's purse was empty."
The color drained from Van Grut's face. "Surely you don't-"
"In all this broad wilderness, you knew something about one particular tree."
Van Grut once more looked longingly toward the road.
Duncan demanded, "Why this tree? Why these marks?"
"It's not just one tree," Van Grut said. "There are others."
"Others?"
The Dutchman turned with a stubborn gaze then sighed, opened his journal, and began leafing through it. As Duncan watched he paged through detailed drawings of Indians, birds, and mammals, stopping at a sketch of a large tree. It seemed to be the one in front of them, until Van Grut pointed to the legend he had recorded underneath. Boundary Marker No. III. Duncan read on. 1 mile SE Forbes Road, 4 miles W. Ligonier. Monongahela Land Co.
Duncan looked up, suspicion in his eyes. "You didn't come to help me." He shook his head angrily. "You are using me."
Van Grut looked away, at the tree. "My travels, my equipment, are costly. My family lost every guilder in the collapse of the markets in Antwerp years ago. There are three ways one can earn an income while living on the frontier. Trapper, soldier-"
"Or surveyor," Duncan finished.
"It is an honorable pursuit," the Dutchman protested, but the hint of remorse in his voice was unmistakable.
"Yet you didn't tell me."
Van Grut twisted his fingers around the drawing lead in his hands. "I do two or three days of survey work, then two or three collecting specimens." He regarded Duncan apologetically. "They said he was nailed to a tree. How was I to know it was this tree?"
"You suspected it. Why?" Duncan grabbed the journal and pushed it toward Van Grut's face. "Why?" he demanded again.
"Burke," Van Grut whispered. "He was one of the owners of the land company I work for."
Duncan sighed heavily. "All the time in the infirmary, you never said a word."
"Surely it would not have changed anything you did. And he was here in his role for the militia."
Duncan did not argue. He looked back at the tree, seeing again the dying man in his mind's eye. Burke clearly stood at the confluence of many events. Of many mysteries. "Tell me about the land company."
"It is owned by Virginians. A vast tract was ceded to them by some Iroquois chiefs, but the government will not accept the deed without a more definite description. More land claims will come, everyone knows, and they mean to use this tract as the anchor for fixing the location of future deeds."
"It was Burke who paid you?"
Van Grut nodded. "A month's wages."
"When?"
"The day before yesterday."
"Where?"
"By another marker tree, the one with the roman three cut in it. A few miles east of here."
Duncan paged through the book and found the corresponding drawing, complete with the roman numeral and Indian carvings, but none of the geometric symbols found on the tree before them. He pointed to the strangely haunting shapes. "What do they mean?"
"I have no idea."
"You were not curious?"
"I am always curious. They seem to mark out the boundary in some other way. I do not know why, or for whom."
Duncan walked along the wide trunk. "There is a sequence, based on the weathering of the wood. The Indian signs from long ago. The Roman numerals from months ago. These peculiar runes made a day ago. How many of your other trees had Roman numerals?"
Van Grut did not need to consult his book. "Only the ones with Indian signs."
Duncan handed the journal back to Van Grut, who opened it to a blank page and quickly began drawing.
"What else did he say that day?"
"We made conversation. Spoke of the task at hand. He struck me as being in a hurry."
"What exactly about the task?"
"I showed him my drawings. He was most pleased with them, said he would choose ones to buy for his parlor wall when all was finished. Then he changed my assignment."
"How so?"
"There had been another surveyor named Putnam assigned to this region. He disappeared months ago. I assumed it had something to do with him, that they had found him or his records."
"But what was your original assignment?"
"I was to originally record a detailed description of the last fifty miles of the trail, the final western segment of the boundary line. Two days ago Burke declared that the last tree, by the Monongahela, no longer needed to be visited. In fact he said plainly do not visit it. I took it as an order."
"Burke had the whole wide forest," Duncan said as the Dutchman recorded the marks on the tree, "yet he left his men and came here. As his destination. It must have been to meet someone. He met his killer at a boundary marker just as he had met you the day before at one. Why?"
"A convenient place to meet," interjected McGregor, who had been watching the forest uneasily. "No other tree like it, because of the marks. You can't just say meet ye at yon beechy tree," he added, gesturing to the landscape around them. There were hundreds, thousands of beeches all around them, interspersed with groves of hemlock.
It was, Duncan had to admit, a likely answer. "Who else was in the region two days ago?"
"The Highlanders," McGregor quickly recited. "Three hundred regular infantry. A handful of scouts. Teamsters on the Forbes Road with their wagons."
"Teamsters going where?"
"The western forts have to be regularly replenished. Ligonier, Bedford, Pitt. As many as fifty wagons a week this time of year."
"Coming from where?"
"The Forbes Road goes from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Conestoga, Carlisle, Bedford."
"Who else?"
"That pack of French Indians you reported, looking for fresh stew meat," the sergeant added, referring to the enemy tribes' notorious, though much exaggerated, reputation for cannibalism.
"The tribal politicians," Van Grut added.
"Politicians?"
"The treaty delegations. Representatives of the tribes subordinate to the Iroquois are coming from many directions, with a rendezvous at Ligonier before traveling east. Half chiefs, the Iroquois call them."
"People are looking for peace with these treaties, not murder," Duncan countered.
Van Grut winced at Duncan's seeming naivete. "Do you understand nothing? The dispute over the Virginians' claim to this tract of land is the primary reason for the treaty meeting."
Anger simmered in Major Latchford's eyes as he watched the arrival of still more treaty participants. The flood of civilians clearly rankled him. The teamsters and their mules brought disarray to his orderly bastion, the merchants who traveled with the convoy defied his orders not to engage in trading out of their wagons, the Indian chiefs ornamented with tattoo, fur, and paint ignored his command to remain in the tribal campsite he had designated in the outer grounds, wandering around the fort like curious spectators. But as Duncan watched the officer from the stable, where he and McGregor unsaddled their garrison horses, it was the half-dozen men dressed in simple black that were the real target of the major's smoldering expression. It wasn't merely that the Quakers were obviously men of affluence or that they gave but cool welcome to the king's troops in their province, McGregor reported, it was that their leader announced that he was commissioned as a magistrate.
Latchford had known the Pennsylvania official was coming, Duncan realized, but had assumed he was not arriving until the next day. The major had lost his race to deal with the murder before the arrival of the Quakers, before the arrival of a civilian with judicial authority.