Duncan only half heard his words. He pulled away Conawago’s fingers, soaked in blood. He ripped apart the linen where it had been torn by the ball, muttering a Gaelic curse as he saw the ugly gout of flesh. The ball had scraped along the top of the shoulder, breaking the skin along its passage before digging into the flesh at his back.
“It’s still in there,” Duncan declared in an apologetic tone, “lodged between the skin and the shoulder blade.”
Conawago grimaced, then reached into his belt and handed Duncan his skinning knife before taking a stick in his mouth and leaning over to tightly grip a thick root with both his hands. Duncan had nearly completed the full course of medical studies in Edinburgh before being arrested and transported to America for harboring a Highland rebel, yet he often sensed Conawago had a better understanding of the ways of healing. He tore the shirt another few inches and bent over his friend’s shoulder with the blade.
He sliced the skin quickly but had to press against the wound to force the ball out. He gritted his teeth as Conawago moaned, cursing the luck of the shot. He would have gladly taken the wound himself to keep the old Nipmuc out of harm’s way.
As was often the case, Conawago seemed to read his mind. He spat the stick out when Duncan showed him the ball. “If you hadn’t pushed me, my friend, it would have been in my chest.”
“But why?” Duncan asked as he wiped the bullet on his britches and dropped it into the pocket of his waistcoat.
“The Canadians grow desperate. Disrupting supplies means disrupting the British attacks in Canada.”
“Canoes. You mentioned canoes.”
“Where the shore curves around ahead of us. In the shadows of a big sugar tree hanging over the water.”
From his pack Duncan pulled out the small copper pot they used for cooking. “I need to wash the wound,” he said, gesturing toward the lake.” Before stepping away he reloaded his gun and placed it within reach of Conawago.
The supply boat was disappearing behind the curve of the shore Conawago had described, beyond the huge maple. Not for the first time he marveled at his companion’s eyesight. If he had not known what to look for, he would never have seen the four bark canoes. They had been pulled into low shrubs so that only their ends were visible.
When he returned, Conawago had his sewing kit in his lap, tying a piece of thread onto a needle. “We can still make it before dusk,” he said to Duncan.
“Nonsense. We’re making camp here. You’re in no shape.”
“It was not my leg that was shot. Of course we are going on.” He handed Duncan the needle and thread. “You can return the favor.”
Duncan’s hand unconsciously went to the long scar along his hairline, where a raider had tried to scalp him the year before. Conawago had saved his life for the first time that day, then sewn up his wound. Duncan returned his friend’s expectant gaze and grimaced, but found himself unable to argue. “This is going to hurt,” he warned.
A quarter hour later they were under the shadow of the massive maple, studying the canoes with new worry. They had not been pulled from the water for safekeeping. They had been disabled with several holes in their bottoms, then hidden.
“Why take an ax to a perfectly good canoe?” Duncan asked.
“Because you don’t intend for it to be used again. That is not the real question. If you smash a canoe you no longer care about it, no longer need to travel on the water. But why does someone smash a canoe and then hide it?” Without waiting for a reply Conawago wrapped the deerhide strap of his pack around his uninjured shoulder, hitched the arm with the injured shoulder into his belt, and set off down the path. Duncan cast a worried gaze down the lake, where a young Scot had been killed that day, then followed.
Conawago’s wound kept him from running, but he set a fast walking pace for the last miles to Bethel Church. Duncan saw the effort it took for the old Nipmuc to push back his pain, but he succeeded in doing so, murmuring once more the joyful songs of the woodland peoples reserved for reunions between long-separated family members. Half a century before, Conawago had returned to his clan’s home after years of studying and travel with the Jesuits only to find his people gone, the little valley where they had lived decimated by farmers. He had never seen his people again, and all the emotion he had pushed down after losing his mother and siblings and failing to find any trace of them for so long was rising to the surface. There was weariness in his voice now, sometimes a hint of melancholy, but most of all there was joy.
When at last the little settlement came into view below the long ridge they descended, Conawago paused. “I almost forgot,” he declared, and Duncan watched in confusion as he settled onto a fallen log and extracted the eagle feather Duncan had retrieved. Then he saw the little jars and pouches Conawago produced from his pack, and he understood. The feather, meant as a gift to Conawago’s long lost nephew, had to be blessed and adorned with the marks of their tribe. The old Nipmuc looked up for a moment with the smile of an excited boy. “Within this hour I will have embraced members of my tribe!” he exclaimed, then bent to his solemn task.
As Conawago offered the feather up to the four points of the compass and began a chant, Duncan turned toward the buildings in the distance. They questioned those they had met in their rapid passage from the Catskills, learning that Bethel Church was a community of Christian Iroquois constructed on the army’s supply road between Albany and Ticonderoga, two miles from the lakeshore. The settlement had been built around a small church established by one of the Anglican missionaries who had started competing with the Jesuits and Moravians for the souls of the woodland tribes. The inhabitants of the mission had taken up farming and wagon building as a means of livelihood, and to Conawago’s obvious pride a teamster near Albany had proclaimed Hickory John to be the best maker of wheels in the Champlain Valley. It was a hard life for the natives who embraced their new faith so fervently. They were often treated as outcasts by their own people and never fully trusted by the Europeans, though often they were the most devout Christians Duncan had ever met.
As Conawago drew a pattern with ocher on the feather, Duncan settled onto a boulder and studied the little collection of log structures half a mile below them. So late in the afternoon he would have expected to see more activity. As Duncan tried to recall what day of the week it was, his gaze settled on a square structure in the center of the settlement, marked by a timber cross fastened above its roof. The inhabitants were no doubt in church.
His friend was changing his shirt when Duncan turned around, wincing as he struggled to pull the bloodstained one over his shoulder. Duncan sprang to his side to help, then held the little mirror they shared, suffering Conawago’s warning glances, as if the old Indian dared him to comment on his unusual show of vanity in wiping the grime from his face and straightening his long greying hair.
At last Conawago wrapped the precious eagle feather in a piece of doeskin, hitched the hand of his injured arm into his belt, and with an eager grin led Duncan down the narrow path. His journey of five decades had come to an end.
“A handsome creature,” Conawago declared of a draft horse grazing in the pasture where the trail met the road. “A noble village, Duncan,” he added, gesturing toward the sturdy houses they approached. He was going out of his way to show pride in the settlement, where more Nipmucs lived than anywhere else on the planet. It was indeed a tidy, well-kept community, the hands of craftsmen evident in the construction of its dozen buildings. Firewood was stacked neatly by each house. A well with a long sweep for dipping buckets stood near the little church. Smoke threaded lazily out the chimney of what looked like a smithy.