Sarah was ringing the large bell set at the front of the house. “We all have those bells, Jamie,” Sam explained. “It’s a warning system for Indian attacks or a house afire. There’ll be ten men here in that many minutes.”
Sam had lit a lantern from a peg under the overhang and he and Jamie walked over to the groaning men. “Masked brigands,” Sam said contemptuously. “Thieves in the night coming to steal from honest men.”
“I’m bleedin’ to death, man!” one of the horse thieves said. “Help me.”
With his next gesture and following words, Jamie knew that Sam was no man to play with. He lifted one heavy pistol, cocked it, and said, “Want me to put you out of your misery? I can. Just say the words.”
The man screamed, “No. For the love of God. Are ye daft, man? And who is that little savage with ye?”
“My son,” Sam said, the words proudly spoken. “And if you call him a savage again, I’ll put a ball between your eyes.”
The man with the arrow in one buttock cried out. “I been grievously wounded, Mr. Montgomery. Will you see to it that I come under a doctor’s care?”
The pounding of hooves stopped any further words. Armed men jumped off their mounts and rushed to the scene. They looked at the arrow-punctured bandits and then at Jamie.
“I think you done well by takin’ this lad under your roof, Sam,” one said. “These are the Saxon brothers from down Tennessee way. My oldest boy said he thought he seen them a-skulkin’ around your place the other afternoon. I was raised up with their oldest brother over in Virginia. He’s a good man, but these two is nothing but white trash.”
“Where’d you stand to put the points in them, boy?” another man asked.
“Over there by the overhang,” Jamie said, slipping the sinew bow string off to save both string and bow. “They were talking about knocking you in the head, Mr. Sam, and then... well, doing things to your wife.”
“That’s a filthy calumny!” one of the Saxon brothers yelled. “We done no such thing. He’s just tryin’ to get us hanged!”
“I do not lie,” Jamie said. “There is no reason for me to lie. If I had wanted you both dead, I could have easily done so.”
One of the men who had ridden to the scene said, “That’s a good twenty-five/thirty yards over yonder, boy. You right sure you didn’t just luck out these shots?”
Jamie looked at the man. Without changing expression, he restrung his bow and notched an arrow. The barn door was fifty yards from where he stood. “The dark spot just above the latch,” he said, and lifted the bow. The arrow flew to the dark spot with a thud. “This one will go beside the first one.” The arrow landed within an inch of the first arrow.
The men laughed. One said, “You got any more questions about the boy’s skill, Luke?”
Luke good-naturedly joined in the laughter and replied, “Nope. My wife always said I beat all for puttin’ my foot in my mouth. Looks like I done it again.” When the laughter had once more subsided, he smiled down at Jamie. “You’re all right, son. You’re all right.”
“I got me a arrey in my arse and y’all’s havin’ a arrey shoot!” the rump-shot brigand yelled. “How about givin’ me some relief?”
Luke spat on the ground. “When the jury hears the boy’s testimony about what you wanted to do with Mrs. Montgomery, you’ll get some relief, Saxon. Thirteen steps and a rope.”
The men were trussed up and tossed, not too gently, into the back of a wagon and since it was only a couple of hours until dawn, they were taken into town to the jail, escorted by several of Sam’s neighbors.
“Stay here and protect Sarah, Jamie,” Sam told him.
The boy nodded his head, a solemn expression on his face. “I will do that, sir. You do not have to worry while I am here.”
“I do believe he means it, too,” a man muttered. “I shore do.”
On the way into town, one of the neighbors said, “The boy don’t smile much, do he, Sam?”
“I guess if you’re raised as a captive by Shawnees,” Sam replied, “you wouldn’t have a lot to smile about.”
“Raised by Shawnees!” one of the Saxon brothers hollered, lying on his stomach in the bed of the wagon. “Why, that’s got to be the Wolf-boy that there Cherokee told us about a couple of months ago, brother. The one that was taken captive as a tadpole.”
“Wolf-boy?” a neighbor said.
And the conversation was lively on the ride into town, with Sam telling the story — he still wasn’t sure he believed it — about Jamie facing down the pack of wolves and gaining the Shawnee name of Man Who Is Not Afraid.
“Damn!” Luke said. “You shore nuff got you a ring-tailed-tooter, Sam.”
“Yes, I sure did,” Sam replied. “I don’t believe anyone would argue that.”
“I damn sure won’t,” a Saxon said. “Oh, Lordy, my arse is on fire!”
Four
The news of Jamie’s felling two horse thieves with arrows was all over the small community by breakfast time. Most of the people applauded the boy’s actions and most of them lamented that Jamie did not aim higher and once and for all rid the land of the worthless Saxon Brothers.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” the Reverend Callaway told a gathering of men.
“The Lord also works in mysterious ways,” one of Jamie’s supporters countered.
But a few were on the other side.
“I told them at the meetin’ hall that damn boy was nothin’ but a savage,” John Jackson said to Hart Olmstead, the only man in the community with a worse disposition and attitude than John. Hart was an ignorant, opinionated, overbearing, crude, hulking lout. And his four sons were just like him, one of whom was Jamie’s age.
“Oncest them damn Shawnees git holt of a person, that person ain’t never fitten to live in a white society agin,” Hart said. “I’ll not have my boys rubbin’ elbows with no damn red nigger. He ain’t white no more. He’s Injun, through and through.”
Very few in the community agreed with that opinion, but it only takes a few.
“And I don’t believe that wench’s story about her bein’ off in the head, neither,” Hart opined. “Some stinkin’ buck bedded her down first night in that Shawnee town and that’s that.” He shuddered at the thought. “That’s almost as bad as bein’ had by a nigger. Let’s go see Sheriff Marwick. I know them Saxon boys. They ain’t bad people. I don’t believe they was tryin’ to steal Montgomery’s hosses.”
The sheriff, a large pus-gutted man named Burl Harwick, was about as qualified to uphold and enforce the law as he was to be pope. But when elections were held, no one else wanted the job so he got it, more by default than popularity. Burl was even more ignorant than Hart Olmstead, and on top of that, he was a coward. He was also inherently lazy. Few really liked the man, so it was only natural he would be friends with John Jackson and Hart Olmstead.
“I ain’t met the boy as yet,” Burl said to his two friends. Just about his only friends. “But ever’body says he’s a right nice boy. Big for his age and sol-emnlike.”
“Well, you got to talk to him, Burl,” John said. “And since we’re your duly sworn deputies, we’ll ride along with you out to the Montgomery place. I think once you talk to him, you’ll see what me and Hart already know: he’s an Injun. And we don’t want no damn Injuns around here.”
John and Hart were sworn deputies, albeit unpaid ones. However, they both knew that few in the community took them very seriously.
Burl checked on his prisoners before he locked up the sturdy log jail. Both men were in leg irons and behind bars, and that, coupled with their wounds, insured that they were not going anywhere. The “doctor,” actually a barber and bartender by profession, had to dig and cut the arrowheads out of the rump and leg of the Saxon brothers. Not a very pleasant experience. The brothers lay on their bunks and suffered with a great deal of loud complaining.