LISTEN, THE DRUM!
Robert Edmond Alter
To Maxine
“A land not worth fighting for
isn’t worth living in.”
—GEORGE ROGERS CLARK
1752–1818
1
FIRST BLOOD
Matt Burnett eased his leggings out behind him. He squirmed his chest and stomach into a comfortable position on the shocking-white snow and froze his body into a waiting statue. Only the eyes in his youthful face moved as he peered through the pine branches at the quiet, secluded Indian path. His long musket lay at his side, under the light pressure of his tanned hand.
It was late winter, the fag end of the year 1753, and the chill December sun inched slowly over the still Pennsylvania forest. Matt could feel the sharp bite of the cold snap working its way through his deerskin garments, but because of his nervousness and anticipation he could also feel icy sweat gathering on his hide.
His eyes narrowed in annoyance suddenly as he sensed the old Indian, Chief, moving in the scrub on his right.
Matt’s thin lips made a tight smile. He knew what was bothering the Seneca: Chief was afraid he wouldn’t get the first shot at the Abenaki that was trailing the path of the two unknown white men. And if he didn’t he couldn’t morally claim the scalp.
But he can have it for all of me, Matt thought with a repressed shudder. He cocked an ear, trying to pick up a movement from Shad Holly who was hidden further up the trail. There wasn’t a stir of sound from that quarter. Shad had probably fallen asleep.
Matt canted his eyes downward for a moment, peering again at the strange footprints that stepped before him in the Indian path. Shad and Chief had both agreed that the prints were made by two white men shod in worn boots: a tall man with a long stride, and a squat man with a quick choppy walk.
The three hunters had come upon the trail three hours ago, at the place where Slippery Rock Creek forks, and had further found the telltale tracks of an Abenaki following the two strange white men. They had hurried south quickly, cutting away from the trail, and at the close of three hours running had knifed back into the path in the hope of intercepting the Abenaki. The double boot prints in the path now showed them that they had been successful.
But the presence of the two lone white men in the vast wilderness bothered Matt. What were they doing there? What did they want? They weren’t trappers, like he and Shad, because trappers didn’t wear boots. Nor, Chief had said, were they French soldiers from Venango or Fort le Boeuf, because the boots were American-made. What then?
A bird on the far side of the path began a throaty warble, then changed its mind in the middle of a trembling note and shut up. Matt’s hand tightened on the musket. His thumb eased the lock back.
Thirty paces down the path a pine branch whipped silently aside and a tall Abenaki with crimson war paint on his face stepped into the trail. His obsidian eyes flashed to the snow beneath his moccasins and his narrow bullet-shaped head moved from right to left as he studied the tracks.
Suddenly his head lifted high and he seemed to sniff the crisp air.
He’s on to us, Matt thought urgently, but he isn’t quite sure yet. He edged the musket up slowly to cover the hollow pit in the Indian’s chest where it showed through his open blanket.
The Abenaki started to move, then stopped. His hooded eyes shadowed with suspicion as he stood there like a listening image in the middle of the trail. Matt’s finger curled about the cold trigger.
All at once the Abenaki’s head snapped to the left, his eyes blazed, and he stared at Matt’s pine-needle shelter. Instantly his right hand swung up, showing a glinting tomahawk, and he took an oblique leap into a crouch, and right then Chief’s musket went KA-PLAM! and you could see the bark and snow fly off a pine a foot above the Abenaki’s hunkered head. You never could teach Chief not to jerk the trigger.
That Abenaki hadn’t known about Chief, and you had to say this for him: no near miss was going to distract him from his purpose. He cocked the tomahawk over his shoulder and let out a Eee-yu! and came leaping for Matt, and his intentions couldn’t be any clearer.
Matt swiveled his body in the snow and swung the barrel of the musket and squeezed back on the trigger. A ball of white smoke bloomed as the second shot shattered into the sullen wilderness and, blinking his eyes against the haze, he saw the tattered feather in the Indian’s scalp lock sweep forward as the brave doubled into the mushy snow.
Matt reloaded, keeping one eye on the trail, as he counted up to one hundred. Nothing happened; no second Abenaki appeared. So he stood up and stepped out of his shelter.
He heard Chief give a grunt of admiration—but it was only from politeness. Deep disappointment lay heavy on Chief’s weather-grained face as he moved his stodgy body over to the side of the dead Abenaki.
“Fine,” he muttered; but Matt thought the word lacked conviction. He knew Chief was still thinking about the scalp.
Shad Holly lumbered suddenly through the brush and stood yawning and blinking at the dead Indian. Holly was twenty-one, having three years on Matt, though his great height and rotundity gave him the appearance of being ten years older. He wiped at his beefy red face with a thick square hand, and smiled.
“I knew you was gonna get him, Matty,” he confided. “I didn’t have no worry about that a-tall.”
“That’s why you decided to take a cat nap, eh?” Matt winked at Chief.
Instantly Shad’s pouchy features twisted into a lump of righteous indignation. “It ain’t true that I fell asleep!” he bawled angrily. “You expect a man of my size to run through the woods for three hours like a durn fawn and then not even get to close his eyes for a minute? That’s all I done—just closed ’em for a second while we was waitin’ on this redstick. I didn’t even doze, not even for a minute!”
But Matt was looking at the dead Abenaki again. He had no regrets over the shooting. After all, the Indian had been on the warpath. But it was the first time he had been caught up in the gut-grabbing shock of a life-and-death struggle, and now he felt awed.
Chief, however, seemed to feel nothing at all. He pushed at the dead man with the toe of his moccasin and grunted. Then he hunkered down to peer at the brave’s still features.
“St. Francis Abenaki,” he muttered, with a touch of disdain.
Shad pawed at his beefy face again and sniffed. “Well, that means he was workin’ for the French, and it’s dead certain he wasn’t trailing no frog-eaters.” He eyed the boot prints reflectively.
“They ain’t redcoats, so my guess is they belong to Americans—say scouts, or maybe messengers. Now why would two Americans be coming hotfoot from Canada?”
Matt looked off at the grim wilderness, draped weirdly with sullen gray mist, all crisscrossed with the reaching black stick-arms of leafless branches, and said:
“Only sure way to find out is to catch up with them. They can’t be far ahead . . . probably holed up right now wondering who fired.”
“I’m sick a playing hide’n seek with a bunch of strangers,” Shad grumbled. “We was gonna go home. Don’t you forget that our traps and hides is clear back on the Susquehanna.”
“Yes, but we think these men are Americans,” Matt appealed. “And I think they’re in trouble. And if they are—we can’t leave ’em out here in Mingo and Delaware country alone.”
Shad rolled his eyes and blew out his breath and pawed at his face. Then he threw his fat hands into the air and sighed resignedly.
“All right, Matty, all right. If you ain’t gonna sleep nights without first gettin’ yourself into Injun trouble—we’ll go run ’em down. But I’m agin it.” And, in an undertone,