Stark and black were the tall trees, growing misty green along the branches with the budding leaves of spring. I walked to drink water from a running stream and startled a perch, twenty pounds at the least. It swam away, disturbed by my presence. Downstream a deer lifted its muzzle from the water and crystal drops fell back into the stream. It glanced disdainfully at me and walked away, seemingly unworried by our coming.
With morning our wood smoke mingled with the lifting mists and we heard no sound but the soft crackle of our own fire and the slight hiss of some damp wood we used. A movement in the wild clover made us look up to see something vast and shadowy, some monstrous thing, coming toward us through the meadow grass, emerging slowly from the mist.
It stopped, smelling the fire at last, and seeing us. It faced us, massive and horned, a huge buffalo bull with a great mass of wool over its face, shoulders, and hump, wool that sparkled with morning dew. Wreaths of fog hung about it as it stared from small back eyes almost buried in the wool.
The buffalo was no more than fifteen yards away and behind it there were others.
It stared at us, undecided as to our importance. It dropped its head then, pawing at the grass.
'Meat,' Keokotah said, 'much meat.'
With one of my two pistols I aimed at a spot inside the left foreleg and squeezed the trigger. The pistol leaped with the concussion, and I placed it on the ground beside me and took up the second, but held my fire.
The great buffalo stood stock still, staring at us; then slowly the forelegs gave way and the beast crumpled and went to its knees. Then it rolled over on the ground.
The others simply stood, staring stupidly, unalarmed by the sound because, being unfamiliar with firearms, the sound might have seemed like thunder. One young bull came forward and sniffed at their fallen leader, smelling the blood and not liking it. We stood up then and walked toward them, and the young bull put its head down, but at our continued approach it backed off and they began to walk away across the meadow.
Glancing at Keokotah I noted his features were unmarked by surprise. Had he seen or heard a gun before? Later, I learned he had not, but he was a Kickapoo, not to be astonished by such things.
With our skinning knives we went to work, each in his own way but working well together, cutting away the hide and selecting the best cuts of meat. There was fuel here, so we built up our fire and built drying racks for the meat, cutting it in strips to smoke and dry the better. Then we staked out the hide to be scraped and cured.
Nobody in our time could have been better armed than I. For general purposes I carried an English longbow, with which our father's training had made us expert, and a full quiver of arrows. I also carried a razor-sharp twelve- inch blade. My true strength, and one which I had not intended to reveal except in emergency, lay in two long- barreled firearms my father had taken from a pirate ship. Obviously a part of some booty the pirates had themselves taken, the pistols must have been made for some great lord.
They were matched repeating pistols with carved walnut stocks elaborately dressed with scrollwork, masks, and figures of gold. The operating mechanism was nothing less than a masterpiece, designed--according to the story my father had heard, and which he passed to us--by one Fernando, the bastard son of the Cominazzo family of armorers, of Brescia. When that noted family fell upon evil times and was taken by the Inquisitors, Fernando escaped to Florence, carrying only his tools.
Anxious to obtain a place for himself he labored in secret to create the two pistols. Charges of powder and ball were carried in tubular magazines in the butts, the openings closed by a revolving breechblock into which were cut two chambers. To load, one simply pointed the pistol toward the ground and rotated a lever on the side of the gun. This dropped a ball and a measure of powder into one chamber, sealed off the chamber, primed and closed the flash-pan.
The pistol could be fired twelve times without reloading. Fernando had taken the finished pistols to the Lorenzoni and won a place in their establishment. Much later, other such weapons were made by the Lorenzoni.
Barnabas had never used the weapons, worried by what seemed a too complicated mechanism. When I was allowed to examine the guns it seemed to me that I could handle them. They were both beautiful and deadly, but when traveling I preferred to use the longbow and conserve my ammunition. The two pistols I carried in the scabbards provided for them.
My father had grown up using the bow. In the fens where he had lived it was the most effective way of hunting, whether for birds or for larger game. As we grew up we boys vied with one another in shooting at marks, often at incredible distances for a bow.
Until I killed the buffalo Keokotah had seen only the scabbards. He was aware of firearms, for he had had contact with the French in the Illinois River country, yet I intended him to believe they were single-shot weapons.
Keokotah was not yet my friend. We were two strangers traveling together, but at any moment he might choose to kill me. The rules of conduct Europeans were supposed to apply in their dealings with each other were the product of our culture. The Indian, of whatever tribe, came from another culture with none of our ethical standards. He had standards of his own, and in most Indian languages the words stranger and enemy were the same. To attack by surprise was by far the best way, as he had long since learned, and what to us might seem the basest treachery he might consider simple logic.
My father had gotten along well enough with Indians, but he trusted few of them and few trusted him. It was simply the way it was, and it would need many years, if ever, for the white man and the Indian to come to any understanding. What the white man considered charity the Indian considered weakness, yet if a stranger penetrated an Indian village without being seen he was treated with hospitality as long as he was within the village, for the Indian tried to keep peace in his own village. Once the stranger left he might be killed with impunity. This was the usual practice, yet there were variations.
Keokotah might travel with me for days, and then, no longer amused or curious, he might kill me and travel on without giving it another thought. And he would expect the same from me. At every moment I must be on guard, for at any moment I might be attacked without warning.
We might become friends, but that lay in the future, if ever. Meanwhile, I would be careful, as would he.
Westward I had hidden a birchbark canoe when on an earlier trip to the Great River, and now we went that way, taking our time, learning the land as we passed over it.
That English friend the Kickapoo had known--I must learn more of him. Where had he come from? A prisoner of the French? Taken at sea? Or somewhere ashore? Who was he? What was he?
Yet I had begun to realize that Keokotah did not respond to direct questions.
Upon the brow of a low hill we paused to study out the land. A deer moved across before us. The Kickapoo looked about, and then he looked over at me. 'Somebody come.'
I had seen nothing, yet I must not betray my lack of knowledge. My abilities must seem equal to his. To surpass him might be dangerous, and in any case, unwise. He must never know how much I knew.
I gestured westward. 'Hiwasee over there,' I said, 'many Cherokee.'
He shrugged. 'Who are Cherokee? Nobody. I am Kickapoo.'
We remained where we were, studying the country. He might be an enemy, but out there before us there were certainly enemies. The Cherokee we knew, and they knew us. So far we had been friends, but the Indian was often a creature of whim, and the man with whom I traveled was no friend. I might be judged accordingly.
'Somebody come.' That was what he had said. How did he know? What had he seen that I had not? And who was coming?
My canoe was less than a day from where we now were, but I said nothing of that. When we came to it would be soon enough. To talk too much is always a fault. Information is power. Also, these paths I knew, and I watched to see if he knew them too, yet in no way did he betray himself.
Watching Keokotah I was puzzled. His attention did not seem to be directed to any particular point, yet he was alert, listening.
His apprehension affected me. What had he sensed? What was he expecting?
A small grove of trees clustered behind us, and before us the hill sloped away toward a meadow lying along a stream. Above us the blue skies were scattered with puffballs of cloud. It was very still. The deer we had seen earlier came out of the brush again and walked to the stream.
I started to move but Keokotah lifted a hand. As he did so an Indian emerged from the forest near the stream and stood still, looking carefully about. That he was an Indian I was sure, but he was clad in garments unfamiliar to me. His head was wrapped in a turban. As he stood two others followed him, one of them an old man.
