The symbols at the bottom of the trunk were old, blurred by the growth of the bark, but the representations of the forest animals crudely carved on the ledge stone underfoot were still clearly visible. Duncan stepped back, looking at the stone, then the tree. There were layers of messages, seeming to span centuries. Spirit messages of the Indians. Educated messages of Europeans. Diabolic messages of killers.
Van Grut, his anxiety quickly giving way to his scientific curiosity, dropped to his hands and knees on the stone. Duncan pulled him away. The Dutchman's protest faded as he saw the intense melancholy with which Conawago stared at the symbols.
"Do you have more tobacco?" Duncan asked Hadley.
"Of course," the Virginian answered, then frowned as he grasped Duncan's meaning and reluctantly reached into the bag at his belt.
Van Grut and Hadley followed Duncan's example as he arranged embers from their cooking fire in a semicircle around the old carved rocks, then crumbled leaves of tobacco over each. As they stepped back Conawago began murmuring a prayer in one of the old tongues, with open hands gracefully sweeping the fragrant smoke over the ancient, sacred stones.
"I don't understand anything," Hadley finally said with a sigh.
"It has been Conawago's quest these past months, seeking out these old sacred places. Those who ceded the land used the old Warriors Path as a boundary. Certainly they didn't know that under their feet was something else, a pilgrim's way as it were, spanning untold generations."
"Surely it is too much coincidence."
"Not at all. The geography funnels humans here. The trail mostly follows the bottomlands, between the high ridges. Anyone traveling from the north to the rich Ohio country or to the Virginian settlements would follow this course. And where it crosses the most important river of the region would be a natural place for a marker, for a shrine even."
"Before this," Conawago joined in, "before Europeans, the Iroquois fought terrible wars with the Catawbas and others in the south, in what you call Virginia and the Carolinas. This is the trail they would take. Since time out of mind war parties would pass here, stop for blessings, for purification before crossing over into the lands where the enemy dwelled, or to give thanks for safe passage on their return."
Duncan remembered Skanawati's warning and looked about the landscape. The Monongahela was visible through the trees to the south. Stay away from the bloody water, he had said, or you may fall into the crack in the world. As he looked out at the bones still scattered over the forest floor and the sacred tree scarred by two murders, he was not inclined to argue the point. The butcher's ground was not simply a perfect place to commit murder-who would notice two more sets of bones? — but also its dark air seemed to speak of more death to come.
"But why, McCallum," Hadley asked as he watched Conawago, kneeling among the stone carvings, whispering to them now, "would the Monongahela Company want to interfere with a sacred-"
"They didn't need to know anything about its history. All the old trails followed prominent contours in the land, a natural boundary. Ask an Indian to draw a map, or a land grant, and he would use the trails as a base line as surely as roads would be used in the settled lands. No one knew about the sacred history of the trail, nor needed to know."
"I still don't understand," Hadley repeated.
"Such a place is not for understanding," Duncan said, and he gestured the Virginian to the cairn. "It is for reverence." They silently stacked several more large flat rocks on top. Van Grut watched Conawago at first with fear, then tried futilely to ask the old Indian about the symbols carved in the ledge stone. But Duncan knew Conawago was no longer there, no longer seeing or hearing his companions. He had gone away with the ancestors and spirits of the forest. At last the Dutchman gave up his questioning, took out his journal, and began to sketch the marks on the tree.
"There must be something more we should do for them," Hadley said, staring forlornly at the cairn.
"Give them a Psalm," Duncan offered.
Hadley nodded slowly and thought a moment.
Duncan was so certain of what the young colonial would speak, he almost commenced the comforting Twenty-third's words of shepherds and flocks himself.
"Lord," Hadley began instead, "thou has been our dwelling place, in all generations. Thou turnest man to destruction and sayest, `Return ye children of men.' For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night."
Duncan's grandfather also had preferred the Ninetieth. To hear the words now gave him unexpected comfort. He mouthed the final words as Hadley spoke them. We spend our years as a tale that is told.
After they finished they silently stacked several small colorful rocks on the top of the cairn.
Van Grut was sitting on a log, still sketching, when they returned to the far side of the tree.
"You still have not answered me, Van Grut," Duncan said.
"I don't know, I tell you. I don't know why surveyors are being killed."
"You met Burke only once?"
"By Ligonier, yes."
"Did you show him your journal?"
"I was working on it when he met me. He asked to see it."
Duncan extended his hand, and Van Grut handed him the sketchbook. Each time Duncan held it he saw something new. This time, leafing through, he discovered many portraits of Indians, several with inset sketches of moccasins, pipes, baskets, and other accoutrements of tribal life. "He saw you were beginning to understand Indian life, perhaps read Indian messages."
"Surely that means nothing."
"Who were the first to be killed?"
"Townsend, if you credit the rumors. Then these two we have now found."
"Townsend knew the Indians and their ways. Then this surveyor Cooper and his Indian wife, his Iroquois wife. In Philadelphia there are many surveyors available."
"What are you saying?"
"All the early victims knew something about Indian signs."
"Not the man Cooper who died here."
"Maybe at first they hired an Indian who had a surveyor with her. The most urgent task was to find trees with the Indian markings."
Van Grut's brow wrinkled in confusion.
"Last autumn, after the two died here, several Iroquois died on the northern end of this same trail, by similar markers."
"What are you saying?" the Dutchman asked.
"It wasn't exactly surveyors who died at first." Duncan cast a worried glance at Conawago. "The murderer started with those who can read the trees."
Duncan found all of his companions staring at him. The old Indian seemed about to speak, then suddenly cocked his head to the north. The screams they heard a moment later seemed distant at first, but the war whoops and gunshots that followed were just over the next ridge.
CHAPTER FIVE
Duncan and Conawago darted into the forest shadows, the young Scot sweeping up his rifle, his comrade extending his war club as they ran, not directly at the sounds of battle but in an arc that would put them in the shelter of the rocks above it.
His fear of the forest had never fully retreated despite his months with Conawago, and suddenly Duncan was reliving the terrible moments when he had first ventured alone into the deep forest, convinced that death lurked in every shadow. He struggled to push down his fear, keeping his eyes on his friend. As always, as danger threatened, the presence of the old Indian steadied him. Duncan echoed his movements, listening, instinctively marking the dangers ahead. The deep, throaty roar of rifles being fired close together, the bark of shorter muskets scattered among the trees, the hiss of arrows, the whoop of attacking warriors. They were half a mile from the boundary tree when Duncan glimpsed the small band besieged at the base of a low ridge.