“Ye said it might have happened in the war,” Ian said, lifting the bones from a steaming trout, then shaking his fingers to cool them. He passed a section of the boneless flesh to Rollo, who swallowed it in a single gulp, temperature notwithstanding. “Will that ha’ been the war wi’ the French, then? I didna ken there was any fighting so far south.”
Myers shook his head, chewing and swallowing before he answered.
“Oh, no. It’ll be the Tuscarora War I was meanin’; that’s how they call it on the white side, at least.”
The Tuscarora War, he explained, had been a short-lived but brutal conflict some forty years before, brought on by an attack upon some backcountry settlers. The then governor of the colony had sent troops into the Tuscarora villages in retaliation, and the upshot was a series of pitched battles that the colonists, much better armed, had won handily—to the devastation of the Tuscarora nation.
Myers nodded toward the darkness.
“Ain’t no more than seven villages o’ the Tuscarora left, now—and not above fifty or a hundred souls in any but the biggest one.” So sadly diminished, the Tuscarora would quickly have fallen prey to surrounding tribes and disappeared altogether, had they not been formally adopted by the Mohawk, and thus become part of the powerful Iroquois League.
Jamie came back to the fire with a bottle from his saddlebag. It was Scotch whisky, a parting present from Jocasta. He poured out a small cupful, then offered the half-full bottle to Myers.
“Is the Mohawk country not a verra great distance to the north?” he asked. “How can they offer protection to their fellows here, and they with hostile tribes all round?”
Myers took a gulp of whisky and washed it pleasurably around his mouth before answering.
“Mmm. That’s fine stuff, friend James. Oh, the Mohawk are a good ways off, aye. But the Nations of the Iroquois are a name to reckon with—and of all the Six Nations, the Mohawk are the fiercest. Ain’t no one—red or white—goin’ to mess with the Mohawk ’thout good cause, nossir.”
I was fascinated by this. I was also pleased to hear that the Mohawk territory was a good long way away from us.
“Why did the Mohawk want to adopt the Tuscarora, then?” Jamie asked, lifting one brow. “It doesna seem they’d be needing allies, and they so fierce as ye say.”
Myers’s hazel eyes had gone to dreamy half-slits under the influence of good whisky.
“Oh, they’re fierce, all right—but they’re mortal,” he said, “Indians are men o’ blood, and none more than the Mohawk. They’re men of honor, mind”—he raised a thick finger in admonition—“but there’s a sight of things they’ll kill for, some reasonable, some not. They raid, d’ye see, amongst themselves, and they’ll kill for revenge—ain’t nothin’ will stop a Mohawk bent on revenge, save you kill him. And even then, his brother or his son or his nephew will come after you.”
He licked his lips in slow meditation, savoring the slick of whisky on his skin.
“Sometimes Indians don’t kill for any reason a man would say mattered; specially when liquor’s involved.”
“Sounds very much like the Scots,” I murmured to Jamie, who gave me a cold look in return.
Myers picked up the whisky bottle and rolled it slowly between his palms.
“Any man might take a drop too much and be the worse in his actions for it, but with the Indians, the first drop’s too much. I’ve heard of more than one massacre that might not have been, save for the men bein’ mad with drink.”
He shook his head, recalling himself to his subject.
“Be so as it may, it’s a hard life, and a bloody one. Some tribes are wiped out altogether, and none have men to spare. So they adopt folk into the tribe, to replace those as are killed or die of sickness. They take prisoners, sometimes—take ’em into a family, treat ’em as their own. That’s what they’ll do with Mrs. Polly, there.” He nodded at Pollyanne, who sat quietly by the fire, paying no attention to his speech.
“So happen back fifty years, the Mohawk took and adopted the whole tribe of the Tuscarora. Don’t many tribes speak exactly the same language,” Myers explained. “But some are closer than others. Tuscarora’s more like the Mohawk than ’tis like the Creek or the Cherokee.”
“Can ye speak Mohawk yourself, Mr. Myers?” Ian’s ears had been flapping all through the explanation. Fascinated by every rock, tree, and bird on our journey, Ian was still more fascinated by any mention of Indians.
“Oh, a good bit.” Myers shrugged modestly. “Any trader picks up a few words here and there. Shoo, dawg.” Rollo, who had inched his nose within sniffing distance of Myers’s last trout, twitched his ears at the admonition but didn’t withdraw the nose.
“Will it be the Tuscarora ye mean to take Mistress Polly to?” Jamie asked, crumbling a corn dodger into edible chunks.
Myers nodded, chewing carefully; with as few natural teeth as he had left, even fresh corn dodgers were a hazardous undertaking.
“Aye. Be four, five days ride still,” he explained. He turned to me and gave me a reassuring smile. “I’ll see her settled fine, Mrs. Claire, you’ll not be worried for her.”
“What will the Indians think of her, I wonder?” Ian asked. He glanced at Pollyanne, interested. “Will they have seen a black woman before?”
Myers laughed at that.
“Lad, there’s a many of the Tuscarora ain’t seen a white person before. Mrs. Polly won’t come as any more a shock than your auntie might.” Myers took a vast swig of water and swished it around his mouth, eyeing Pollyanne thoughtfully. She felt his eyes on her, and returned his stare, unblinking.
“I should say they’d find her handsome, though; they do like a woman as is sweetly plump.” It was moderately obvious that Myers shared this admiration; his eyes drifted over Pollyanne with an appreciation touched with innocent lasciviousness.
She saw it, and an extraordinary change came over her. She seemed scarcely to move, and yet all at once, her whole person was focused on Myers. No white showed around her eyes; they were black and fathomless, shining in the firelight. She was still short and heavy, but with only the slightest change of posture, depth of bosom and width of hip were emphasized, suddenly curved in a promise of lewd abundance.
Myers swallowed, audibly.
I glanced away from this little byplay to see Jamie watching, too, with an expression somewhere between amusement and concern. I poked him unobtrusively, and squinted hard, in an expression that said as explicitly as I could manage—“Do something!”
He narrowed one eye.
I widened both mine and gave him a good stare, which translated to, “I don’t know, but do something!”
“Mmphm.”
Jamie cleared his throat, leaned forward, and laid a hand on Myers’s arm, jarring the mountain man out of his momentary trance.
“I shouldna like to think the woman will be misused in any way,” he said, politely, but with an edge of Scottish innuendo on “misused” that implied the possibility of unlimited impropriety. He squeezed a little. “Will ye undertake to guarantee her safety, Mr. Myers?”
Myers shot him a look of incomprehension, which slowly cleared, cognizance coming into the bloodshot hazel eyes. The mountain man slowly pulled his arm free, then picked up his cup, gulped the last mouthful of whisky, coughed and wiped his mouth. He might have been blushing, but it was impossible to tell behind the beard.