Then she walked back thirty feet along the trail, bent a sapling almost double, and tossed some leaves over the path beside it to make it look like a deer trap. She judged that thirty feet would give him the time to think, even running at full speed. She calculated where to leave her bow. When she had finished her work, she went through the forest making V marks with her knife in the bark of the biggest trees to mark the trail.
In the darkness just before dawn, she climbed to the side of the mountain to take another look at the camp. When she was satisfied that he was asleep, she took one last look up at the sky, where the stars were already beginning to fade. Life was good and precious, and she was glad that she had never needed to be told that it was. Many Seneca warriors had died alone in the wilderness like this. There were probably some lying unburied all around her now.
She made her way to his camp, floating like a wisp of smoke through the forest without moving a leaf or dislodging a stone. At the dark edge of the camp a few feet from the tent, she lay on her belly and watched, a shadow inside a shadow.
She listened for the sound of his breathing. She had heard it, lain awake beside him listening to it, watching over him and hoping he would survive. Now, as she listened, she heard it again, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t coming from the tent. She slowly turned her head to follow the sound. He was sleeping in the woods behind the canoe, waiting for her to try to kill him in the tent. He would have some kind of alarm to wake him when she tried so he could come out of hiding and shoot her.
She considered for a moment. He had to see her, and when he did, she would have to be doing something he understood, or he might react unpredictably. She crawled to the front of the tent, took the last of her fishing line, and tied it to the zipper on the door flap. Then she crawled back to the edge of the woods, almost at the start of the trail she had blazed.
She gave a strong tug on the line and the zipper moved and started to come down when there was a deafening Barroom! and the front of the tent blew outward, with a three-inch hole in it. Jane leaped into the air at the sound. It was a spring gun. He had another gun! She took a step toward the tent, but her mind settled again. Either a spring gun worked when it was set off or it didn’t. You wouldn’t load the shotgun with more than one shell.
She whirled and saw him. He was coming to his feet, his hair tousled the way it had been in the mornings at Grand River, and she almost called out to him. But the rifle was in his hand and was coming up. His eyes were cold and dead and certain.
She pivoted on her toes and dashed through the space in the bushes just as the rifle cracked. The shot hit somewhere behind her. She had laid out the path carefully to wind through the thickest part of the woods, so there would be no second shot. She had sighted along the trail and made sure there was no straight stretch that was long enough to allow him to stop, aim, and shoot before she turned again and placed a rock or a tree between them.
She ran hard now, sprinting from one marked tree to the next, digging the balls of her feet into the dirt and pumping her arms. She could hear him on the trail behind her, running as hard as she was, his feet hitting harder and louder than hers, determined to get her this time. As she listened, she began to be afraid. She could tell that she had underestimated his speed; he was gaining on her.
She tried to go faster, making her strides longer to pass each mark and take the next turn. At the big sycamore she couldn’t take the turn without falling, so she went into a slide on her side to push off the root with her foot and dash up the next corridor toward the rocky outcropping ahead.
At last she was on the path, running up the little incline between the jagged slabs of stone, then into the chute that the two long rock shelves formed. There was another shot, which went over her head, but she was in the stretch now. She could see the bent sapling. When she reached it, she took a jump and ran on.
Thirty feet farther on, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him appear between the stone outcroppings. She took two steps, put her head down, and leaped over the covered pit. She hit the path hard and let her momentum push her to the right into the brush.
She rolled behind the rock, picked up her bow and the arrow that she had left fitted to the string, turned, and cautiously looked above the rock through the leaves of the bush.
He was coming hard, charging toward her, the gun in both hands across his chest. She could tell from the look on his face that he had seen the bent sapling. He was sure he had spotted a trap and stepped over it without breaking stride. But the confident, almost amused look wasn’t for the sapling. He had seen her leap over the spot where the pit was dug. His eyes were on the path. He was going to jump over the pit.
She pulled the bowstring back, straining to hold it steady. She listened for his footsteps: louder and louder and then a stutter-step. He was timing his approach to push off into the air. Through the leaves she saw the enemy’s eyes. They were on the narrow path, down on the matting covering the pit. With his size and his strength, the jump was going to be easy. He kept his eyes on the pit as he launched himself into the air, higher than he needed to.
As he reached the top of his arc, the hooks caught him. Jane saw the upper part of his torso abruptly jerk backward and a look of horror contort his features. His momentum made five of the fishing lines go taut, and the bough of the tree above him bent, then tugged back, pulling him upright. His breath was sucked in with a whistle.
Her right hand released the bowstring. The arrow streaked through the air and made a thunk as it struck him. He gave a harsh, loud shriek of pain. She nocked another arrow and pulled the string back. She had time to see the black feather of the first arrow sticking out of his shoulder as she released the second.
He was straddling the shallow pit, holding himself upright to keep the hooks from going deeper into his face and chest and trying to claw at the arrow shaft when the second arrow struck his right leg.
The wounded enemy grunted in rage, swatting the arrows out of his shoulder and thigh, where they had penetrated the fabric of his clothes. He dropped his rifle, pulled his knife from his belt, and slashed wildly at the fishing lines. She aimed her third arrow for his chest. It flew straight, but he ducked down just as it came so that it glanced off his back and sailed into the forest.
She dropped to the ground and began to crawl when the enemy grasped his rifle. The woods echoed with shots. He fired wildly, shooting into bushes in her direction as rapidly as he could. Two shots, three more, four this time. She lost count as a bullet bit into the bark of the tree a foot above her head. There was silence again, and she used the time to retreat quietly up the trail a few paces, then slip off into the deep brush. She was in trouble. The arrows weren’t getting through the thick down jacket. It was like armor. She kept going silently, trying to move farther into the brush.
He was enraged now, and he was free. The arrows weren’t doing enough damage, and the fishhooks had only nettled him. He could still kill her, and the pain would make him desperate to do it this time.
Then she heard the scraping sound and stopped. He was climbing up on the stone outcropping that had been meant to keep him in. He was a little hurt but not at all incapacitated. In a moment he would be on top, and he would see her and the rifle bullet would explode through her body. She slipped behind a tree trunk. She couldn’t wait here, hiding until he found her. Jane’s hand trembled as she fitted the arrow onto the string and leaned against the tree. The bow wasn’t powerful enough. She hadn’t been strong enough to use one that could penetrate that padded jacket. "They are less than women." She felt anger rising in her chest. She was going to die; she had been doomed from the moment he had heard her name from poor Harry. The injustice of it stung her, and her chest tightened with hatred as she decided how to deny it. She stepped out from behind the tree into the open and held her bow downward, the arrow ready. She turned to the side as though she didn’t know he was up there and was waiting for him to come up the path. She gave him a profile to aim at.