Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [470]
“He didn’t sleep or eat. For all of a day, and all of a night, and all of the next day, he went on talking, walking round and round the village, stopping at the doors of the houses and talking, until the people in the house drove him away. And then he left.
“But he came back again. And again. He would go away, and hide in the forest, but then he would be back again, by the fires at night, thin and hungry, with his eyes glowing like a fox’s, always talking. His voice filled the village at night, and no one could sleep.
“We began to know that he had an evil spirit in him; perhaps it was Atatarho, from whose head Hiawatha combed the snakes; perhaps the snakes had come to this man, looking for a home. Finally, my brother the war chief said that it must stop; he must leave or we would kill him.”
Tewaktenyonh paused. Her fingers, which had stroked the wampum continuously, as though she drew strength from it for her story, were now still.
“He was a stranger,” she said softly. “But he didn’t know he was a stranger. I think he never understood.”
At the other end of the longhouse the drinking party was growing riotous; all the men were laughing, rocking to and fro with mirth. I could hear the girl Emily’s voice, higher, laughing with them. Tewaktenyonh glanced that way, frowning slightly.
Mice were creeping briskly up and down my spine. A stranger. An Indian, by his face, by his speech; his slightly strange speech. An Indian—with silver fillings in his teeth. No, he hadn’t understood. He had thought they were his people, after all. Knowing what their future held, he had come to try to save them. How could he believe that they meant to do him harm?
But they had meant it. They stripped him, said Tewaktenyonh, her face remote. They tied him to a pole in the center of the village, and painted his face with an ink made from soot and oak galls.
“Black is for death; prisoners who are to be killed are always painted so,” the girl said. One eyebrow lifted slightly. “You knew this when you met the man on the mountain?”
I shook my head, mute. The opal had grown warm in my palm, slick with sweat.
They had tortured him for a time; prodding his naked body with sharpened sticks, and then with hot embers, so that blisters rose up and burst, and his skin hung in tatters. He stood this well, not crying out, and this pleased them. He seemed still strong, so they left him overnight, still tied to the pole.
“In the morning, he was gone.” The old woman’s face was smooth with secrets. If she had been pleased, or relieved, or distressed by the escape, no one would ever have known.
“I said that they should not follow him, but my brother said it was no good; he would only come back again, if we did not finish the matter.”
So a party of warriors left the village, on Otter-Tooth’s track. Bloody as he was, it was not difficult to follow.
“They chased him to the south. They thought to catch him, time after time, but he was strong. He ran on. For four days, they followed him, and finally they caught him, in a grove of aspens, leafless in the snow and their branches white as finger bones.”
She saw the question in my eyes at this, and nodded.
“My brother the war chief was there. He told me, afterward.
“He was alone, and unarmed. He had no chance, and knew it. But he faced them nonetheless—and he talked. Even after one of the men had struck him in the mouth with a war club, he talked through the blood, spitting out words with his broken teeth.
“He was a brave man,” she said, reflectively. “He didn’t beg. He told them the same things he had said before, but my brother said this time it was different. Before, he had been hot as fire; dying, he was cold as snow—and because they were so cold, his words terrified the warriors.
“Even when the stranger lay dead in the snow, his words seemed to go on ringing in the warriors’ ears. They lay down to sleep, but his voice talked to them in their dreams, and kept them from sleeping.