“A sentinel tree,” Duncan explained. “It protects the other side.”
The corporal frowned but warily looked around the back of the tree as if taking Duncan’s words literally.
“Some of the ghosts may still linger,” Duncan suggested, “trying to find their way across.”
He picked up the ranger’s musket, which the corporal had abandoned in his hasty retreat. “Perhaps you’d best keep watch from the creek,” he suggested to the ranger, and extended the weapon to him. “But I would like the loan of your belt ax, Corporal.”
The corporal grabbed the gun with a sour look, then cocked it, aiming it in Duncan’s direction before tossing his ax to Duncan’s feet and marching to a log by the nearby stream. Duncan gathered his neck strap into a coil, pulled the loop over his head and tucked it into his belt, then paused for a silent prayer with his palm on the venerable tree before moving toward some sturdy saplings.
As Duncan worked at cutting poles, Sagatchie consulted the sky, the wind, the surrounding trees, and finally a hawk circling high above before selecting a sunlit patch above a short waterfall. The Mohawk made a round of each of the scaffolds, murmuring quiet words, as Duncan worked the posts into the earth.
There should be other rites, Duncan knew, daylong rites spoken by wise old sachems and tribal matrons, with loved ones joining in, but for Hickory John there was no sachem but Conawago, no matrons, no clan members to gather and recall the heroic deeds of his long life. Like Conawago he was of a disappearing breed, not just because he was Nipmuc but because he was a woodland Indian. Perhaps his greatest achievement of all was that he had survived from the time of the endless forest, from a world that had not known the boundless ambition of Europeans.
Duncan again choked away his questions about Conawago, determined not to break the reverence of the place. At last they were ready to raise the dead man onto the platform. As they pulled the shroud from the body, Sagatchie seemed to grow more troubled. He looked to the sky and spoke something that sounded like an apology.
“Your friend,” he suddenly said to Duncan. “The Nipmuc with the kind eyes.”
“Conawago.”
“Conawago,” Sagatchie repeated with a nod. He spoke in a low voice, nearly a whisper. “He told me you were trusted by the dead. That you could read them. Why did he say that? What did he mean?”
“Sometimes the dead can leave behind questions they need to be answered. There were many questions left at Bethel Church.”
“But you did not even know him.”
Duncan recognized the invitation in the warrior’s voice and saw the nervous way Sagatchie looked at the other dead, as if unsure they would approve. Duncan knelt beside Hickory John. “Did you?”
Sagatchie looked into the dead man’s face as he spoke. “Towantha wandered through the towns of the Haudenosaunee when I was young, never staying more than a few weeks in one place, though my mother once asked him to live with us in our longhouse, with our clan. You could see he was lonely, but he always embraced life’s joys. He would carve things, beautiful things. Bowls with stags leaping along their sides. Pipes for the old men, war clubs for the young ones. He was always looking for something. At first it was for a sign of his people, who had been forced long ago from their homes along the Hudson. Later it was sacred places. He knew about places no one else did. When I stood no higher than a yearling deer, he took me to a cave with paintings of bison and huge bears and told me it showed the lives of people from before time, from tribes who only live in the spirit world now.”
Sagatchie walked slowly around the body. “They will take long to paint his life on the other side,” he added, then gestured Duncan toward the dead Nipmuc and stepped away to gather cedar wood from the stream.
Duncan clenched his jaw and lifted the dead man’s hands, both of which had been crushed, studying their ruin of broken bones and cuts. He lifted away the shirt, noticing that someone had tried to wipe away the bloodstains. A cloth, which Duncan recognized as one of Conawago’s precious linen handkerchiefs, had been placed over the hole in his chest. Duncan lifted the linen to probe the wound, then moved to the bruises and cuts that covered the dead man’s face and shoulders. When he finished he gazed silently at the dead man, recollecting how he had been killed differently than the others, and separately. The others had died in a row, with Hickory John facing them. He had been forced to watch them die. Duncan looked up to find that Sagatchie had lit a small fire and was extending a piece of smoldering cedar wood around and under the scaffold. The fragrant smoke would attract the spirits.
“First he was bludgeoned,” he explained when the Mohawk paused at his side.
“I know not this word.”
“Beaten with something. I saw a bloody wheel spoke in his shop. They beat him, and then they broke his fingers, probably with the hammer that killed the others. The breaks don’t line up, which means his killers broke his fingers one by one, probably laying each one on his anvil. They knew who he was, knew they were destroying his ability to work, to carve those animals and make his wheels.”
Sagatchie considered Duncan’s words for several heartbeats. He clenched his jaw. “You are saying they made sure he took long to die.”
“He suffered long,” Duncan agreed.
Sagatchie spoke to the dead man now. “Like a captured warrior who frightened his enemies.”
The words caused Duncan to hesitate. The Nipmuc had indeed died a warrior’s death. “I think he was tortured for some knowledge,” Duncan continued, “some secret, and when he would not talk they lined up the others in front of him. I think the raiders meant to leave no witnesses in any event, but they made sure to kill the others in front of him, slowly, one at a time, meaning to break him. When they finished with the others and he still did not speak, they found another way to threaten him.” Duncan touched the strange medallion he had found in front of the Nipmic’s body, still in his pocket. “He finally spoke, and they finished him with a blade to his chest.”
Sagatchie frowned, as if not certain he could accept Duncan’s words. “You speak as though you were there with the killers, like Sergeant Hawley said.”
“I was trained as a healer, to understand the many ways of the human body. I came with Conawago to celebrate with Hickory John, not to bury him.”
Duncan returned Sagatchie’s intense stare. It was the way Conawago had studied him when they had first met. It was as if certain members of the tribes could see into another human in ways unknown to others. Sagatchie took a beep breath and raised a hand to the sky. Duncan was not certain what had just happened, but the distrust was gone from Sagatchie’s voice when he spoke.
“Your friend would not let go of this one when we found him,” the Mohawk said. “He was wild in the eyes and frail in the body. I took him to a bed in one of the houses.”
Relief washed over Duncan. Conawago was safe.
Sagatchie made one more solemn circuit around the body, holding the smoldering wood near it. “You are finished?”
When Duncan nodded, Sagatchie gestured for Duncan to help remove the dead Nipmuc’s shirt. “They must see the greatness of the man who is coming to their door,” the Mohawk declared, and he pointed to the intricate designs tattooed over much of Hickory John’s upper torso. Each of the tattoos told a story, Duncan knew, stories of great achievements and spiritual victories, some no doubt lost in the fog of time. Some might well be from rituals no longer known by the tribes. Duncan found himself looking back at the trail. Conawago should be here, Conawago would recognize the stories.
Sagatchie touched the small amulet pouch hanging from his neck, which Duncan knew contained a token of his protector animal spirit, then lifted his face to the sky. “Hear me, oh great ones! I am Sagatchie of the Wolf clan, born of the Mohawk! I give you Towantha of the Nipmuc people! He knew how to release the spirits that live inside wood. He brought joy to the young of the tribes. As a boy he ran in forests that had been untouched by ax and saw.” The Mohawk ran his fingers along the tattoos, gazing at them as if reading from a book. “He journeyed to the big water. He carried wampum belts to the Huron to seek peace between our peoples.” A twig snapped, and they looked up to see several deer. The animals were not frightened, but seemed to be listening. Sagatchie raised a hand in their direction as if in respectful greeting then continued, studying another tattoo of wavy parallel lines and small horned animals. His brow furrowed for a moment then lit with surprise. “He journeyed long ago to the great Mississippi and saw bison that covered the land like blades of grass.”