Broken Trail (4 page)

Around midday, when he began to feel hungry, he pulled a hardtack biscuit from the bag. He nibbled one corner. The biscuit had no flavour at all. But his stomach rumbled, and he had nothing else to eat. Broken Trail broke off a piece and, as he walked along, managed to chew it into a doughy paste that he could swallow.

Toward evening, he came to a green glade with a stream running through it. Here he stopped to make camp for the night. Taking off his blood-stiffened legging, he washed it in the stream and laid it over a bush to dry. The bandage on his right thigh looked clean. No fresh bleeding. Tomorrow, he thought, he would be able to walk faster.

Blueberries were plentiful in the glade, tiny dusky globes bursting with sweetness. He feasted on berries and then lay down on a bed of spruce boughs, not bothering to make a fire. It was a warm night. The chirping of a thousand crickets kept him company, and he slept well.

In the morning his right leg was stiff, although the stiffness eased once he started moving. Again, he chewed hardtack as he walked along. The wet leather of the legging he
had washed felt clammy against his skin. But soon he ceased to notice, and by the end of the day it was dry.

That evening he removed the bandage from his thigh. The wound was healing well. There would be a small scar—something to remind him of the day his
oki
revealed itself to him.

On the third day of his journey he reached the west end of Oneida Lake. Charred poles poking up through the grass were all that remained of the fishing village that had stood here three years ago. This was the place to which the warriors who found him in the woods had brought him, a runaway child discovered sleeping in a pile of leaves. He remembered his first impression of the people's dark faces and the mingled smells of smoke and fish. From that day, he had felt at home among them.

He would stop here for the night, he decided. And he would fish for his supper. No need to eat hardtack when Oneida Lake teemed with fish. Almost as soon as he threw his line into the water, a big pickerel took the hook. Sitting beside a small fire, he grilled it on a stick.

As darkness fell, he sang a prayer song. When he lay down to sleep, the sighing breeze seemed to hold the voices of those who had been here before. Not ghosts, but memories populated his mind.

With his eyes closed, he could see his Oneida mother, Catches the Rainbow, placing fresh split-open fish to be smoked on a rack over the fire. He remembered her smile
and her gentle eyes. Her voice was low, and he could not recall her ever raising it in anger—certainly not against him.

His memory of his Oneida father was not so clear. Leaping Deer had been tall, and had had a habit of holding his head slightly turned, as if constantly on the lookout for danger lurking behind his shoulder. For all his wariness, Leaping Deer had died too early, killed in battle at a place called Barren Hill seven moons after he and his wife had adopted Broken Trail.

Broken Trail had learned later that the band's original plan was to hold him for ransom, to trade him for guns and blankets. But Leaping Deer and Catches the Rainbow pleaded to adopt him as a replacement for their own son, who had died. When the band elders approved the adoption, Moses Cobman received the name Broken Trail, and was instructed never to think of himself by his Yengees name again.

As time went by, and especially after Leaping Deer's death, Broken Trail would sometimes waken at night to find Catches the Rainbow, propped on one elbow, watching him with such a look of love that he would close his eyes to shut it out, knowing himself unworthy of so much devotion.

What, he wondered, as he lay under the stars in this place of memories, did Catches the Rainbow think when she thought about him now?

The next day, he travelled on, heading in a southeasterly direction. At dusk, a quick throw of his tomahawk killed a
raccoon that was drinking from a stream. A plump, young female. Her meat would be delicious.

After making a small fire and skinning the raccoon, he skewered one haunch on a long stick and settled down to cook his meal. Dripping fat sizzled in the flames, and the mouth-watering smell of roasting meat filled his nostrils.

As he bit into the hot, juicy haunch, a sense of well-being came over him. He liked the way the firelight pushed back the darkness and made the trunks of birch trees gleam white, like a circle of sentinels to guard him.

Suddenly he heard a rustling in the undergrowth, and his whole body jerked to attention. Staring at him were four pairs of round, glowing eyes. Raccoons. A family was watching him eat what might have been their sister. He stopped chewing, ashamed that he had forgotten to apologize to the ghost of the raccoon he had slain.

Before taking another bite, he whispered, “Pardon me. I needed your meat. That is why I had to kill you.”

Soon the glowing eyes disappeared. Feeling forgiven, he went back to his meal.

After eating, he wrapped the remaining meat in the raccoon's skin. Then he curled up close to his campfire and fell asleep.

In the morning, voices awoke him—gruff voices conversing in a language that he did not know. He looked out through the slits of his eyelids. Two warriors, both big men, were squatting on the ground, watching him.

One had a turtle tattoo on his bare chest, and the other a snake. Each wore on his belt a polished war club with which he could easily have dashed out Broken Trail's brains. The warriors' heads were shaved except for their scalp locks, which were only a tuft of hair, neatly braided. Oneida warriors did not wear that kind of scalp lock, nor did the warriors of any other Iroquois nation. Who were these men? Leni-Lanape? He hoped so. The Leni-Lanape were friends of his people. But whoever they were, his best defence was to show no fear.

He opened his eyes fully and sat up. The warriors laughed.

Did they laugh because he was just a boy? Or were they laughing at his blue eyes? Blue eyes always made people laugh; but what could he do about it? He must make these warriors understand that he belonged to a nation worthy of respect. Broken Trail tapped his chest.

“Oneida.”

They frowned. Maybe they did not understand. He tried again.

“Haudenosaunee.”

That worked. Far and wide through the eastern forests, everyone recognized the correct name of the Iroquois, the People of the Longhouse.

“Haudenosaunee?” Both shook their heads. “Yengees.” Broken Trail knew that word. “Yengees” meant “English.”

He rose to his feet and drew himself up as tall as he could, painfully aware that the top of his head did not reach the
chin of either warrior. Maybe if he brandished his tomahawk, they would show respect. But when he pulled it from his belt and waved it threateningly, they laughed again.

What more could he do? An offer of food might show these scoffers that he was a true hunter, a man who knew how to survive in the wilderness. With a sweep of his arm he pointed to the bundled hide that held the rest of the meat.

“Brothers, join me. Here is meat. Let us eat together.”

This approach was more successful. They understood his gesture, if not his words. When he had unwrapped the meat, they nodded approvingly.

From embers still alive in the ashes, Broken Trail built up the fire. The warriors cut green sticks from a nearby tree and sharpened the ends to make skewers.

While the meat was cooking, he eyed his visitors curiously. Where were they going? He wanted to tell them that he had been walking for four days and had eight days left in which to reach Kings Mountain. If he knew their language, he could ask how many days' travel lay ahead. But he was no more able to ask than they were to answer.

All three gnawed the meat hungrily. Eating with them made Broken Trail feel like a man among men. When finished, each struck the ground with his right fist while uttering words of thanks to the Great Spirit in his own language.

Then Broken Trail stood up and pointed south to show where his journey lay. When the warriors saw that he meant
to leave at once, the one with the snake tattoo took a small rawhide bag from his pouch and handed it to him. Opening it, Broken Trail recognized the honey-coloured powder—finely ground cornmeal mixed with maple sugar. Light to carry and delicious, there was no better food for a long trail. One mouthful, followed by a drink of water, would swell to fill a man's belly. Smiling his thanks, he tucked the bag in his pouch.

For a moment he hoped that the two warriors would travel with him. He had felt grateful for their company after four days without hearing another human voice. But their trail was not his, and he set forth alone.

BY THE END OF THAT
day, his fifth on the trail, he saw in the distance great peaks and ridges jutting into the sky. So he had reached the mountains, and from here on there would be mountains all the way.

“Climbing cuts the distance by half,” the captain had told him.

If time had not mattered, Broken Trail would have kept to the valleys, where rivers and streams wound their way. But time did matter. So over the mountains he must go.

He camped overnight in the foothills, and in the morning began to climb. The wooded lower slopes presented no
problem. But above the tree line, the ascent was rough and steep. Nothing grew on the high ridges and peaks but lichens and a few stubborn strands of grass.

When he stopped to rest in the late afternoon, he saw a village far below. A Yengees village. Church steeple. Tiny white houses like the one he had lived in long ago. A mill on a creek that twisted and turned and sparkled in the sunshine. There would be fish to catch in a creek like that.

Before they were driven from the Mohawk Valley, Elijah used to take him fishing. They would stand on the riverbank, where the turbulent Canajoharie mixed its waters with the placid Mohawk River, their hooks baited with minnows. Elijah had shown him how to tempt the speckled trout that fed in the swirling water. “That's a beauty!” he would shout as he grabbed his little brother's line to help him land it. Or, “Never mind, there's plenty more where that one came from,” when a fish slipped the hook and darted away.

Where was Elijah now? When Broken Trail was nine and his brother thirteen, they had planned to join the Royal Greens together, he as a drummer boy and Elijah as a soldier. If he had not run away, he would be with Elijah now. His name would still be Moses Cobman.

Looking down at the Yengees village, he recalled how different his beginnings had been from those of other Oneida boys. When he went all the way back as far as memory reached, he recalled the feel of a braided rug under his
hands and knees, the wide boards of a wood floor, and Ma's hands smelling like bread. His favourite toy had been a red wagon. Never for him a tiny war club or bow and arrows.

It was his duty to forget all this. Why couldn't he?

Broken Trail rose to his feet. He had to keep going if he wanted that rifle. He would climb until sunset, he decided, and then look for a spot of level ground on which to spend the night.

Dark shadows had filled the valley before he found somewhere to sleep—a hard rocky ledge strewn with rubble. It was not a good place, but the best he could find. A massive boulder rested at the edge. Between the boulder and the rock face there was room to lie down. The boulder would stop him from rolling off the ledge in his sleep. Broken Trail shuddered at the thought of his body bouncing and tumbling down the mountainside.

Here there were neither spruce boughs nor piles of fallen leaves to make his bed. No water to drink. And so he could not eat the corn powder in his pouch; instead of giving him a comfortable, well-fed feeling, it would make his stomach ache. With a sigh he took out a hardtack biscuit and began to chew. It tasted no better than last time. His stomach grumbled. He wanted meat. Or a chunk of cornbread. He wanted maple sugar, the sweetness in his throat.

Broken Trail stared at the hardtack that he held between his thumb and finger. Lifting his arm, he hurled it down the mountainside.

Instantly he felt foolish, knowing his action had been childish. Someday he might be grateful for a piece of hardtack, he rebuked himself.

As he watched the sun go down, a bank of dark clouds rolled toward him from the west. The air smelled faintly sulphurous with the approach of thunder, and then the storm broke. Broken Trail crouched between the rock face and the boulder while rain drenched him and thunder cracked so loud it shook the ground.

Even after the storm had passed, he slept little that night. In the morning, he woke up stiff, cold, wet and hungry. Despite the downpour that had pelted him during the storm, he could not find a drop of water to drink. It had all drained away.

Surrounded by rocks and sky, he felt utterly alone. Above him was the crest. Below him vultures circled, probably scouting for some juicy, ripe carcass.

He pulled a hardtack from the bag pouch and this time forced himself to eat it, working hard to produce enough saliva to swallow the dry biscuit. He should have asked those redcoats for a canteen. All he could think about was water, the cool feel of it wetting his mouth, the pleasure of gulping it down. He could hardly wait to reach the next valley. Licking his dry lips, he imagined cool streams and rushing rivers.