“You knew them, Corporal?” he asked the ranger.
The soldier gestured toward the south. “There’s a farm down the road. Sergeant Hawley sent for them. This was their church. They could at least put names to most of the dead.”
“Most?” Duncan asked.
“There be a nameless corporal of the 42nd of Foot,” the ranger declared. “The one you gloated over in the barn. His body was sent back with the dispatch rider for Fort Edward.”
Duncan found he had no stomach for argument. Four open graves lay before him. “Let me help with the digging,” he said in a weary voice.
The corporal studied him, then approached Duncan. He gestured to the guns leaning near the first cross. “We have ranger loads in those barrels. Know what that means?”
“Swan shot on top of a full ball.”
“Tends to take a man down permanently,” the ranger declared as he loosened the strap on Duncan’s neck. “If ye try to run we’ll all fire. Ye’ll be in pieces before ye reach thirty paces.”
A cool determination settled in Duncan. “If I turn my back on these dead,” he vowed, “you are welcome to put a bullet in me.” Though he had not known any of the inhabitants of Bethel Church, he felt an unexpected affinity for them. They had given a home to Conawago’s kin. In their way they too were more last ones of their kind, and too many last ones were falling.
They dug in silence, Duncan pausing every few minutes to look around, hoping for a sign of Conawago but not daring to ask about him for fear it could risk his friend’s arrest.
They had finished another grave when a stranger wearing clothes of brown homespun cloth appeared, carrying another rough cross. Abraham Oaks, it read. They were all the names of Christian Indians, names assigned upon christening.
“There were children,” Duncan said.
The corporal gestured toward two shrouds lying together. “Brought from the smithy with the rest.”
“There were more. Young ones taken from the schoolhouse,” Duncan said.
The ranger shrugged and kept digging.
As they finished another grave, a sturdy blond woman in her thirties wearing a bloodstained apron appeared with the last cross, for Rachel Wolf.
Duncan looked at it in surprise. “But there was another in the smithy,” he called out to the woman.
She shook her head but said nothing, just pointed to the cross above the church. The man in brown homespun appeared beside her. “My wife means that although the wheelmaker discussed the one God with great interest, he had not been touched by holy water.”
Hickory John would not be buried in the churchyard.
“But surely-” Duncan’s protest faded as the tall Mohawk from the barn walked around the corner of the building, leading a horse. Draped over the back of the animal was another shrouded body.
“Sergeant Hawley says Sagatchie knows a place,” the farmer declared. As he spoke, the sour man who had arrested Duncan appeared behind the horse.
A place. The Mohawk meant a ground sacred for the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois, where the dead were laid on platforms with offerings to take on the long journey to the spirit world. The tribal ranger stared at Duncan without expression. His war paint was gone in preparation for his solemn duty.
“He’ll need help,” Duncan suggested to the sergeant. “He will have to build a platform as high as his head and lift the body onto it. Not a job for one man alone.”
Hawley frowned. “My men are plenty experienced in handling the dead. One of my corporals will go,” Hawley spat, then he turned to the wiry man with the spade, who muttered under his breath.
“Something to say, corporal?” Hawley growled.
“Only how it seems a lot of trouble for a dead savage. Any fool can throw a body into a boneyard.” The rough men of the frontier became rangers for many reasons. Some did so for the money, which was greater than that paid to garrison soldiers. Others signed on to keep their homes safe from raiders. Some did so just to kill Indians.
“There’re words that must be spoken,” Duncan pressed. “Hickory John was one of the last of a great tribe. He must be honored.” The Mohawk ranger cocked his head toward Duncan, surprise now in his deep black eyes. “The spirits must be made aware of his coming,” Duncan added, addressing the Mohawk now.
The man with the spade gave another jeer. “I know the Psalms, boy,” the corporal growled. “The Lord maketh me lie down in green pastures.”
Duncan shook his head. “Do you know the names of the spirits that must be called to admit Towantha to the next world? Can you speak the condolence of the tribes? Will you find a snake to carry the news of his journey to the other side?”
When Duncan turned to the sergeant, Hawley’s gaze was locked on Sagatchie, who stared contemptuously at the corporal. The tribal rangers were critical to the success of the irregular units, and they had to be respected. The sergeant stepped to the Mohawk’s side and quietly conferred. Sagatchie hesitantly handed him the treacherous war ax slung over his back. The sergeant turned to Duncan, lifting the curved club that ended with a hard ball on one side and an iron spike on the other. “Do you have any notion how many this ax has killed, McCallum? Near a dozen I know of, and no doubt there’s more. Sagatchie can split your brainpan at fifty feet if he has to.” Duncan offered a quick bow of his head toward the Mohawk. “Corporal!” The sullen ranger looked up at Hawley. “You’ll go too.” The corporal cursed.
“If the prisoner offends the spirits, Sagatchie, you can teach him proper respect,” Hawley added. “Just bring him back mostly alive.”
Duncan eyed the Mohawk uneasily. Sagatchie’s face seemed chiseled in stone, its expression somber, but in his eyes Duncan recognized the anger that smoldered in such warriors, never totally dying away. He looked over the Indian’s shoulder, increasingly concerned that he had not seen Conawago. Surely his friend would want to be present for the death rites of his kin.
Sagatchie stepped forward and extended the lead rope of the horse toward Duncan. Hawley refastened the strap around Duncan’s neck then untied it from the tree, handing the end to the Mohawk. Duncan cast one more worried glance toward the settlement before yielding to Sagatchie’s tug on the prisoner strap and following him up the trail into the forest.
They climbed up steep switchbacks for over an hour, Sagatchie chanting in his own tongue the entire time, until they reached a small valley dominated by hemlocks, interspersed with maples. When they reached a flat where all the foliage was blood red, Sagatchie tossed down the end of the prisoner strap. The surly corporal lowered himself against a massive sugar tree and cut a piece of tobacco.
“Careful, Corporal,” Duncan said in a casual tone. “Some in the tribes say the spirits of such trees can reach out and pull in humans who show no respect for the place.”
“What kind of fool talk is that?” the corporal spat.
“My friend Conawago and I found a skeleton once. The tree was growing over the bones. I said the man must have died many years before. Conawago insisted it had happened only days earlier, because the man had not shown the proper reverence. Of course such a powerful tree would have to have the mark of the spirits on it.”
The corporal seemed about to curse again, but as he turned he saw Sagatchie untying the horse’s burden, then nervously studied the landscape beyond the tree. A casual glance may have dismissed the regularly spaced, thin timbers in the shadows as a grove of saplings, but now the corporal saw them for what they were, the posts of more than two score platforms, each topped with a decomposing body.
The soldier shot up and looked uneasily at the massive trunk he had been leaning against. “Jesus weeps!” he gasped and quickly backed away from the tree. Above his head were carved symbols, worked in the wood by many different hands over many years. A human skull had been carved into it, and also a bear’s paw with long curving claws, a leaping deer, and at least a dozen snakes, creatures understood by the woodland tribes to be particularly important messengers to the gods.