“I have brought trouble upon you,” she said. “Were it not for me—”
“I will not have it,” I said. “You have no reason for blame. What happened has happened. Now we must do what we can.”
We walked along the wall together and from time to time stopped to study the forest out there. Since I was a small boy, I had watched that forest for enemies or for game, and I knew its every mood and shading, how the sunlight fell through the leaves and where the shadows gathered. It held no mysteries for me but much of memory. I had played there as a child with Yance, Jubal, and Brian, later with Noelle. We had climbed its trees, picked berries there, and played hide-and-seek under its branches.
My father had ever been a pillar of security. He was always there, ever kind, ever considerate, always strong. He had a temper, and I had seen it from time to time, but we all relied on him, not only we children but the adults as well.
Now it must be I who was strong. I must be the one to hold our little community together, to provide reassurance. That was why I could no longer wait for an attack, for Bauer was too shrewd a man. He would contrive some ruse, some stratagem, some trick.
“Never let an enemy get set,” my father had said. “Attack, worry, keep him off balance. Never let him move from a secure position or give him time to move his pieces on the chessboard.”
It was never a part of my thinking to shelter women from the truth. I had learned from my father to trust their judgment. “Tonight,” I told Diana, “I am going out there.”
“But what can you do?”
“I won’t know until I see, but I must do something.”
“What about Yance?”
“Yes.” I knew what she meant. “Yance might be better than I. He is very wily. But the responsibility is mine. For whatever reason they are here, it was I whom they followed. Although he is attacking all of us, he is my enemy, and it must be up to me to do something about it.”
“But what can one man do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I must just go out there and see.”
Oddly enough, I wanted to go. Lurking behind walls was uncomfortable for me, for I was a man of the forest and the mountains. To let an enemy have the time to choose when and how he would attack had never been my way, and now that I had resolved to go out there, I was enormously relieved.
“You’d better rest, then,” she said. “I’ll get Yance.”
She went down the ladder, and I waited while the rain softly fell; under the low clouds the forest was a darker, deeper green, a richer green.
There was no way to plan for what lay before me; only when I was out there and found their camp could I decide what would be best to do. Out there in the forest at night, yet it was a forest I knew well from the slopes of Chunky Gal and the Nantahalas to Piney Top and the Tusquitees, from Compass Creek to the Gap and Muskrat Branch. And even far beyond from the Chilowees to the Blue Ridge I had roamed and hunted, fished the streams, and lived off the fruit of the land.
I had fought the Senecas there, too, the warriors of the northern lands, the snakelike, wily, crafty, and very brave Senecas.
Tonight I would go.
Tonight.
CHAPTER XXIII
Then the rain fell no longer, but the forest dripped. Heavy were the leaves with rain, soft the grass beneath the moccasins. The narrow door opened; wraithlike, I slipped through and stood against the wall. Silent in the darkness, listening.
Black and still was the night. Water dripped from the branches, and I crossed the open acres about the fort and went into the trees. Among them, my body close along a slim dark tree, I waited again and listened. I did not know where lay their camp, but this night I thought they would have a fire, burning low now.
Only slightly blew the wind, a baby’s breath of wind, but I moved across it, my nostrils ready for the slightest smell of smoke.
Nothing.
How many watched the fort? Or had they all withdrawn to rest? My hand felt for a leaf, which was wet, and I put the wet fingers to my nose, for a wet nose smells better. A smell of rotting vegetation, for I was near the bank of a creek where there was a bit of marshy ground.
The tree beside which I stood was a chestnut. My touch upon the bark told me that, but this mountainside, as all through the hills, was covered with a variety of trees: chestnut, oaks of several kinds, tulip trees, red maple, sourwood, and many others. Some I knew by the smell, all by the touch. Careful to make no sound, I worked my way into the forest, working my way deeper and swinging in a rough half circle, always alert for that telltale whiff of smoke.
It did not come.
Before me the forest thinned. Only a few yards farther was the trail that led along the west side of Piney Top to Tusquitee Creek. Pausing, I listened. My ears heard nothing; my nostrils found no smell of smoke, only the faint sweetish smell of crushed magnolia, not unusual, for there were many about, and their leaves often fell and were crushed underfoot. None of our people had been out, however.
It was probably nothing. I waited, and then I heard faint stirrings. How far off? Carefully I worked my way through the forest. The sounds had ceased. Ahead of me was thick brush. Wary, I avoided it.
With the rain, wild animals and most birds had taken shelter, so I could rely upon none of them to give me warning of a foreign presence. Yet as boys we had been taught by the Catawba to develop our sixth sense and to be always aware. We would take turns at staring at one of us until he turned suddenly, becoming aware of our attention. By continual practice we had become as sensitive to this as any wild animal.
Often our father, when in the woods with us, would suddenly stop and ask that we describe some area just passed or the tracks of animals or insects we had just glimpsed in the dust of the track. With time our awareness had grown until we missed very little.
In the wilderness attention to detail was the price of survival.
Abruptly I paused. A faint smell of wet buckskins and wood smoke. I held perfectly still, then turned my head this way and that to hear the better and to catch any vague smells. Primitive man, I suspected, used his nostrils quite as much as his eye or ear, but civilization, with its multitude of odors, soon distracts the attention until the brain no longer registers them on the awareness. It was different living in the wilds.
Careful to permit no leaves to brush my shoulders, I worked my way through the brush and trees, pausing often to listen. It was a murmur of voices I heard and then the stronger smell of wood smoke; a moment later, the glimpse of fire.
At that moment I stood very still, alert to every sound. Now I was close. I had found them, but what was to be my next move, I did not know. At least one of them, Max Bauer himself, was a skilled woodsman, not to be trifled with. I wanted to see, to hear, to estimate their numbers, but not to be heard myself.
After a moment I edged closer, not over a few feet, and could see into their camp. I took care not to look directly at Bauer, although I could see him, or at Lashan, who was lying at one side.
“Not at daybreak,” Bauer was saying. “Indians often attack then, but after daybreak when they have decided there will be no attack and they have relaxed. Some will be eating, some will be beginning their day’s work. Not more than one, probably, on the walls. Lashan, you are good with a lance. Can you get that guard for me? Kill him instantly?”
“I can. At thirty feet, which is the closest I can get, it will be easy.”
“Then kill him. I want him dead. If we cannot strike when the gate is open, we will go over the walls. Toss loops over the tops of the poles, and up you go, but I want at least a dozen men going up at once. The surprise will be complete. No looting and no women until every man is dead, you understand? Any man who does otherwise answers to me.”