“We give up!” he cried, raising his hands high. “We’re not armed. We’re just . . . just out hunting!” With no weapons? How did he explain that?
He stood, scared like he had never been. Watching as the warriors closed in around them. To his dismay, Whippoorwill just smiled, as if nothing in the whole world was going terribly wrong.
Eight
Smoke Shield looked back at the soft soil. His tracks stood out perfectly as he left the collapsed remains of the Albaamaha farmstead. He could see the woman’s body, sprawled half out of the doorway, her dead arms reaching for the corpse of her little girl. The child lay where he’d struck her down, the back of her head caved in from the blow of his war club.
On either side, one of his warriors trotted, eyes searching the forest for additional prey. They did look like Chahta, their hair up in the side-sitting bun affected by the enemy. Their painted faces were done up in the Chahta pattern of red and black. Painting the arrows to resemble the Chahta’s had been easy. Restitching their moccasins was a little more time-consuming, but the tracks looked right, and would have fooled him had he found them on a forest trail.
Smoke Shield’s advantage—as he’d laid it out to his warriors—was that they knew the lay of the land, and how to approach the isolated farmsteads. That knowledge allowed him and his warriors to avoid the commonly traveled trails, to sneak through the thick patches of forest, and to remain unseen.
He’d seen the resistance in Bear Paw’s eyes the first time they’d chanced upon a lone Albaamo man. Killing him had gone against the grain, but once that first one fell and they took his scalp, the subsequent killings had been easier. The added advantage lay in the Albaamaha’s belief that Sky Hand scouts would have given a warning had a raid been imminent. None of their victims was suspecting a thing.
He had ordered no farms to be burned and wanted no smoke to give away their location. Others would stumble upon the dead soon enough. Hopefully, by the time the alarm was raised, it would be behind them, long after the fact.
He saw it all in his mind, as if he were Eagle, looking down upon the land. Four separate parties of five were moving north, attacking farmsteads, then hurrying on after taking scalps and mutilating the dead. Speed was essential.
His warriors would loop wide around Thunder and Burned Wood Towns, keeping to the forest and seldom-used trails. Similarly they avoided the hamlets where numerous Albaamaha lived, having no hope of overcoming that many people in such a short time.
“Minimize the risk of discovery,” he had told his men. “Strike and run! We want to be well ahead of pursuit. Remember that the alarm will be raised at any moment. Pursuit will be coming behind us, and these are our people—Sky Hand warriors motivated to find the intruders. You know their hearts as well as I do. Our only hope is to be ahead of them, to have time to become Sky Hand again before we finally meet up with them.”
And that was the beauty of it all. No one would ever know. In the confusion, his warriors would look as if they, too, were searching for the Chahta.
But that was later, after they had finished their sweep. After they had found Fast Legs, and rescued him from his tormentors.
They took one of ours! The knowledge festered like a deep splinter. It drove him onward, fueled his rage at each Albaamaha farmstead. After all these years, had the Albaamaha learned nothing of Sky Hand vengeance?
He trotted on. Another farmstead lay just past this belt of trees. The place had been built at the edge of the fields, easy to approach. As he glimpsed it through the boles, he smiled. Smoke was rising from the fire out front. He could see a man, a woman, and three or four children. The woman was pounding corn in her mortar, the pestle rising and falling in time to a rhythmic thump, thump, thump.
He broke from the trees, with Bear Paw and Lightning Arrow on either side. The dogs began to bark, but by then he was racing around the house, his bow drawn. They had no chance.
The journey down from the hills had been difficult in places. Trader, Old White, and Two Petals periodically had to step out and wade, dragging the canoes through shallows, until the channel deepened. But as the terrain opened into swampy bottoms, the route had grown easier. Now, with the confluence of several streams, they had both current and enough draft to make the descent into the Horned River Valley easy. The soils here had taken on a yellow hue where they were exposed in the river bank.
Trader leaned his head back, drawing the familiar scent of the swamplands into his nostrils. Beyond the trees and backwaters, the gum, bald cypress, and tupelo gave way to oak and hickory.
They passed the first small Chahta farmstead, waving and calling greetings as they passed. Old White had made sure to hold his staff high, the white feathers waving. Despite calls to make land and Trade, they passed on, leaving the disappointed family staring after them.