She turned her back to him and Jamie knew, with that gesture, she was forever cutting the Indian ties to him.
Jamie stepped out of the lodge and did not look back.
He walked away with all the dignity an eleven-year-old can muster, and that is about on a par with the Queen of England. And it does not matter whether the eleven-year-old is a so-called uneducated savage or the son or daughter of a royal family.
Very few in the Shawnee town paid Jamie any attention as he walked out of the enclosed village and headed in the opposite direction of the blow-down in the timber. Where Hannah was waiting. Bad Leg watched him leave, however, and noted Man Who Is Not Afraid was heading north.
“He’ll probably kill a bear and there will be singing and dancing and more praising of him,” Bad Leg muttered sourly. “I hate him.”
Deer Woman busied herself in the lodge. She had grown to love the white-haired boy, much more so than Little Wolf, who she suspected was not quite right in the head. There was something very dark and twisted about Little Wolf.
When Jamie was in the deep timber, certain he could not be spotted from the town, he changed directions and began running. He ran at a steady, distance-eating lope and was not even winded when he reached the blow-down.
“Here!” Hannah called, standing up amid a jumble of brush and old fallen logs.
“Follow me!” Jamie said, and took off at a trot, slowing his pace so Hannah would be able to keep up.
He jogged along for another five minutes before reaching the spot where he’d been caching supplies. While Hannah rested, Jamie removed the supplies from the hiding place and then carefully concealed the spot.
Jamie said, “Follow me, Hannah. Put your feet where I put mine. Do not break off any twigs or bruise any leaves. Do not step in any mud or soft ground. I think they will first search to the north. But they will, in time, find our trail. Of that, I am certain. Probably by this time tomorrow. There is a small river that flows south about a day’s run from here. Once we reach that, we will enter the river and cling to logs for a time and let the current take us...”
“There are great scaly creatures in the waters!” Hannah said, very much afraid. She had heard talk of the huge alligators that slid through the dark waters of the creeks. Huge beasts that preyed on humans and animals alike.
“No,” Jamie assured her. “Those are to the south and east of here. Nearer the big waters. The old men say they used to be here. But no more. Let’s go, Hannah. We’re running for our lives.”
“And freedom,” Hannah said, adjusting the straps to her pack.
“Yes,” the boy/man said. “And freedom.”
* * *
By full dark, Tall Bull knew that one of two things had happened: Jamie had been attacked by a panther or a bear, or he had run away to seek out his own kind.
Since the boy had an uncanny ability to get along with wild animals, Tall Bull had to conclude that Man Who Is Not Afraid had run away.
“Bad Leg saw him going north,” Little Wolf told his father. “That would be the logical thing for him to do.”
Tall Bull grunted. “Man Who Is Not Afraid would not necessarily do the logical thing. He is uncommonly bright and filled with wisdom for one so young. We can do nothing in the night. There is no moon and we would only blunder around in the dark, destroying any sign they might have left. Which will be few,” he added dryly. “We will commence the search at first light.”
* * *
Jamie had first set a hard pace. He was young and his muscles strong. But when he saw that Hannah was beginning to falter, he slowed to a walk for a time, allowing her to catch her breath. For seven hours that is how they traveled, running, jogging, walking, then resting for only a few minutes every hour. At full dark, with Jamie in a part of the country he had never before seen, he found a good place to rest. Hannah sank wearily to the branch-protected grassy spot. Jamie had no way of knowing just how many miles they had traveled from the Shawnee town, but he guessed at least fifteen or so miles. Maybe twenty. They were heading into dangerous country; disputed country. While there were ever-growing spots of civilization in this country, it was still very dangerous. And to make matters worse, Jamie really did not know where he was. For as the white people pushed further west, the Shawnee town had been moved several times during Jamie’s captive years.
Jamie thought it was 1820, but he wasn’t sure about that, either. He had heard talk among the elders that there were thousands of whites living in the territory that bordered the latest Shawnee town, considerably smaller and hidden much better than the first one Jamie had been taken to. Many of the Shawnees had moved much further north, but Tall Bull and those who followed him stayed to the south.
“Where are we, Jamie?” Hannah asked the next morning.
“I don’t know,” the boy gave her an honest answer. “But we’re free.”
They walked and ran all that day, and the next, heading south. Jamie never did find the river he was looking for. But he did stumble onto a creek and he and Hannah followed that for miles, sometimes on the bank, sometimes wading to hide their footprints. On the ninth day out, Jamie was forced to admit that he was as lost as a goose. He and Hannah had gotten turned around in the dark woods and he had absolutely no idea where they might be.
“What do we do?” Hannah asked.
“I climb a tree,” Jamie said.
He climbed the tallest tree he could find, and when he finally settled on a limb, he was so startled he almost lost his balance and fell. He was looking at more smoke than he had seen in his life. Smoke from dozens of chimneys. This was no Indian village or town. No Indian would allow that much smoke to fill the air and give away their location. Jamie figured the town, surely a white town, was no more than three or four miles away, over the hills.
He quickly climbed down and told Hannah the news. She was deliriously happy for a few moments, then a worried look sprang into her eyes.
“What’s the matter, Hannah?”
“They’ll shoot us, Jamie. They’ll think we’re Indians. Look at us. We’re more Shawnee than white.”
Jamie had not given that any thought. But he did now. “Hannah, you have a petticoat in your pack. I saw it. It’s white. We’ll rip off some pieces and tie them on sticks. We’ll walk in holding the sticks in the air. That way we’ll be safe. But first we’ll wash as best we can. We’re both filthy. Then we’ll put on our spare clothing.” Buckskin clothing. But it was all they had.
It would have to do.
They scrubbed themselves clean at a spring and changed clothes, then looked at each other, the grown woman and the eleven-year-old man/boy who had thought up the escape plan, and carried it out.
They still looked like a couple of Indians.
Hannah started giggling and Jamie lost his usual serious demeanor and let the child free. Soon they were howling with laughter.
They finally sat down on a log and wiped their eyes with pieces of Hannah’s torn petticoat. She looked at what was left of the undergarment. “I’ve been so careful with this all these years. It was my last hold on reason and order and... sanity, I suppose. It sounds stupid, but it was all I had left.”
“No, it wasn’t, Hannah,” the man within the boy once more surfaced. “You had memories and you had hope. Just like I did. And we had each other. And now we’re free to start over.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Let’s go make a new start for ourselves, Hannah.”
That new start almost ended before it could begin. As they walked up the rutted road that led to more buildings than Jamie had ever seen, they both heard the call.
“Indians! Indians! To your posts. Man your posts.”
Jamie and Hannah froze and held up their white pieces of petticoat and waved them.