War Path by Kerry Newcomb Read Free Book Online Page B

yonder in the middle of the wagon tracks, tooting on that horn of yours.”
    â€œFigured on them seeing me would keep the Frogs busy while you and the lads got into position to welcome them,” Stark said.
    Moses Shoemaker fingered the tears in the big man’s buckskin shirt. Musket balls had passed close enough to tear the hide but leave the man unscathed. “I got to teach you the difference betwixt a ‘welcome’ and a ‘sacrifice,’ you overgrown rooster. Remember even the cock o’ the walk can wind up in the stew pot.”
    â€œNow see here, I am ordering.…” Ransom tried to interject.
    â€œCan’t hear you, Major, my ears is all plugged up and I’m nigh deaf from all the shooting.” Shoemaker shrugged.
    â€œMine too,” said Barlow. The silversmith touched a knuckle to his forehead in deference to the officer’s rank then scrambled off after his gray-haired comrade at arms.
    â€œReckon it will be fall back and fight until the heathens have their fill,” Sam Oday suggested.
    Rogers glanced in Stark’s direction. Both men were the sort that inspired others to follow them. He saw that the man he called Big Timber concurred. It was the way of Indian fighting, a running battle, keeping to cover, making the pursuer pay for every yard of earth and keeping him cautious to a fault.
    â€œGet them home, Robert. I’ll be along shortly.”
    â€œNow, Johnny, there’s nothing you can do for the lads at Fort William Henry,” said Rogers. He didn’t like this at all and made no attempt to hide his displeasure. Ransom stood off to the side, furious at being ignored but at a loss for words. What was Stark up to now? Coward, lacking respect for the major’s authority; the list of his transgressions was lengthening.
    â€œAtoan would like nothing better than to hang your hair from his war belt,” Oday spoke up. His fingers fluttered to the black scarf covering his mutilated scalp. He knew whereof he spoke.
    â€œI say, I shall gather the regiment and follow you, sir.”
    â€œYou can’t follow me, Major. You’ve some stalwart lads, who have no lack of backbone when they aren’t being slaughtered for no reason but there’s nary a one can walk the trail I’ll be forced to take. If I’m to reach Fort William Henry alive, I’ll have to walk and make no sound of my passing, leave no trace, not even a shadow to give me away.”
    Ransom glanced at Rogers and Oday and as if to check whether or not they were finding amusement in the long hunter’s exaggeration. But both men appeared utterly serious. Ransom did not like being played for a clodpate.
    â€œAs commander of His Royal Majesty’s …” He glanced about him. And for the second time this day he asked, “Where the devil is Stark?”

6
    S ee the dead, adrift on the whims of a moonless night. They were soldiers once, British-born and brought to the New World by the lords of empire; they were colonists, frontiersmen bred free and determined to stay that way. See the dead? They were the women who followed their husbands and lovers into the wilderness, who struggled to make a home on the shores of Lake George. They were the children, the precious few who danced and frolicked on the banks of Bloody Pond, who skipped stones and played with carved wooden dolls and soldiers and never suspected their lives would be cut short by tomahawks and war clubs, and like their parents left to perish beyond the walls of Fort William Henry.
    See? Ravens have eaten their eyes.
    Screech owls for their funeral dirge, stone and mist and black shadows write an epitaph for the dead.
    Who are they searching for? What do they want? Redemption? Too late for that Revenge? Perhaps. Or maybe just to laugh again, to love, to live. Broken bodies, ghostly arms twist and wind like a snake, writhing across a fresh dug grave. But no grave for these. And so they come.