“Who else knows you came this way?” Woolford asked Duncan.
“No one.”
“Sagatchie is known in some circles as one who performs dangerous assignments for me, assignments in the shadows of the war. He was following Hawley because we suspected Hawley meant to do you harm. And with luck he might have taken us to the half-king’s messengers.”
“Messengers?”
“I have had men patrolling trying to discover how the half-king communicates with the French. If we can cut off his line of communication, we will cripple his plans for alliance.”
“But surely that is impossible. They could be anywhere in thousands of miles of wilderness.”
“Difficult, but not impossible.” Woolford dipped a finger in a mug of water on the table and hastily drew an irregular oval. “This is the great lake, Ontario.” He traced a dotted line of moisture inside the top of he oval and continued, “There is a water route along the northern shore that is used by the Jesuits and French trappers. The Jesuits rule it with an iron hand and surely would not condone an alliance with tribes who butcher women and children. The half-king would keep his distance from that path. No canoes would ever dare the waters in the center of the lake. And the half-king would not move openly through the heart of the Iroquois
country south of the lake. That leaves the southern shore and a corridor of perhaps twenty miles south of it. My men have been watching there these past weeks.”
“It was just Sagatchie’s bad luck that he met raiders on the river,” Duncan surmised.
Woolford settled into one of the chairs. “Not raiders. Deserters. He found your signs at the old spirit lodge by the river. Someone had been lying in a narrow gully by that mound with that prisoner post. He went down in it to investigate, and when he climbed out they jumped him, began beating him. When he broke away they shot at him.”
Duncan shrugged. “Deserters are desperate men.”
“These were a special kind of deserters. Very savvy about the workings of the army, and the rangers. Sagatchie says they all had bare legs.”
“Highlanders?”
“There is no better cover for murder then war. It’s always happened. A hated officer is found with a bullet in the back of his head. Who’s to say it wasn’t an accident, or that he turned to rally his men and was hit by the enemy? The general asked me to look for patterns. The Highland units were thrown together quickly, sometimes with only a few weeks’ training before shipping out from Scotland. That meant a number of the key administrative billets were not necessarily Highlanders. I found five suspicious deaths among the Highland troops. Four were Englishmen. One of those was a quartermaster, another a provost who arranged guards for the paywagons. General Calder and I were watching some of the Scots. There was talk of secret meetings with French agents in the forest. That’s why Sagatchie was with Hawley’s patrol at Bethel Church.”
“Hawley wasn’t Scottish.”
“Hawley’s company reported to General Amherst, in the North. And Hawley was on patrol with two of the four English officers when they were murdered.”
Duncan hesitated. “You mean Hawley was a suspect.”
“He was a man of expensive habits, known for immoderate gambling and wenching whenever he came to town. Last month he came into a lot of money, which he spread in taverns all along the Hudson. We were more interested in finding a way to negotiate with him, to let him trade information for his life. General Calder and I were about to have that discussion with him when he slipped out of Albany.”
Duncan spoke slowly, weighing Woolford’s words. “Hawley wasn’t working for Calder, but for Calder’s commander. And someone betrayed your plans.”
Woolford shrugged. “Hawley’s dead and Sagatchie’s nearly killed. There’s rot in the regiments and men are dying of it. Funny thing about these recent deserters. Deserters in the Scottish regiments always leave their paychits behind in some conspicuous way, like a matter of honor, a renunciation of the king. And they always go south, to the Scottish settlements in the Carolinas. But not these. They are keeping their paychits and going west. We are desperate to learn why.”
Duncan did not like the pointed way Woolford gazed at him.
“You are a Highland outlaw, McCallum.”
Duncan’s heart sagged. “Do not ask me to act against the clans.” He stared into his folded hands. “Go win the war in Canada and we can be done with this.”
“Would that it were so simple,” came a new voice. William Johnson was climbing the stairs. “The fight we worry about is not in Canada. We win all the battles but are on the verge of losing the war in the forests between here and Montreal.” The colonel scowled at Hawley’s body then called for the guards to take it away. When they were gone, he scraped at the bloodstain on the floor with his boot. “The body will disappear,” he assured Woolford, then he paced around the table, silently studying the three men who sat there. “I will ask no questions except why would a ranger reporting to General Amherst be secretly stalking my guests?” His gaze lingered on Duncan. “Without General Calder or me knowing about it? A few French raiders roaming our lands, that’s just war. But for Amherst to disrupt my Molly’s festivities, that is downright rude.”
“General Amherst doesn’t consult with me, sir,” Woolford replied.
“But your conjecture would be better informed than mine.”
Woolford sighed. “Amherst doesn’t trust my rangers, doesn’t trust the tribal troops, hates the colonials, and curses every time he hears a Highland name. Take your pick.”
As he spoke, Kass appeared carrying a large basket covered with a linen cloth. She silently set it on the table and extracted a wooden plate of sweet biscuits, several chipped china cups, and a copper teapot with steam rising from the spout.
Woolford gave a satisfied sigh. “If I had the strength I would hug you for this, Kassawaya,” he said. She offered a silent smile in reply as she filled the cups.
Sagatchie sipped at his cup with surprising relish.
Woolford grinned at his Mohawk ranger. “I am afraid the baronet has corrupted our friends’ simple tastes,” the captain announced with a glance to Johnson. “I saw the list of the first supplies you ordered, Colonel, when you were asked to organize the tribes into auxiliary forces: two hundred blankets, two hundred axes, forty teapots, and four hundred pounds of tealeaf. It sells as dear as bullets in many villages.” He grinned more broadly as Sagatchie drained his cup and refilled it.
Kass poured herself a cup and sat on the edge of a cot, gazing expectantly at Woolford, who shrugged when he met her gaze. “I have no news, Kass. All I know is that the half-king’s army is moving with lightning speed. Scores of canoes passed the fort at Oswego in the dark three nights ago.”
They were interrupted by a low whistle from below. Johnson leapt to his feet and shot down the stairs. When he came back up, he moved much more slowly.
“A messenger,” he announced in a grim tone.
Before explaining he stepped to Kass and bent over her, whispering. The woman’s face tightened, her eyes flared. She threw her cup against the wall, shattering it into tiny fragments, then dropped her head into her hands.
“It was only a small force the Iroquois Council sent to the Lightning Lodge,” Johnson explained to the others. “The Council has to be careful not to start a whole new war. They tried to defend it. Hurons came from the North and Mingoes from the South. Waves of them, like locusts on trees.” He looked back at Kass with pain in his eyes. “The Iroquois all died, except one taken captive to serve as a messenger. The half-king sent word that the Iroquois must either come to ally with him or come to die.”
Duncan drained his cup and rose. “I would ask that you keep the boy safe here,” he said to Johnson.
“You leave so soon?”
“You said it already. Hetty may be the best intermediary. If Conawago still lives I have to-”