New Found Land Read Free Page B

offering, finally appealing. The smile went from Red Hawk’s face, and there was no mirth in Brad’s. At the end, he said to the others: “Get them the wampum. Twenty-seven strings.”
    â€œWe are on the last sack,” Bos said.
    â€œI know.” Brad shrugged. “We have no choice.”
    The weather had cleared to a frozen calm, and they had the shutters open. They watched the Indians travel easily up the slope and over the ridge. Turning away, Brad said: “Well, that’s that.”
    Simon said: “Tell us the worst.”
    â€œI was going to.” He paused. “The first bit was joke time, Algonquian style. He said we needn’t pay wampum for the roots. They would take Bos’s beard in exchange.”
    To the Indians, who plucked out what little facial hair they had, Bos’s curly and luxuriant beard had been a source of interest from the beginning; they hadgrown used to the women and children giggling over it when they visited the village. Bos uttered a Roman curse. Brad said: “I refused the offer politely, and Red Hawk said they would not hurt him by hacking it off with their poor stone knives; they would buy our strange sharp ones and use them. For two knives they would bring us a turkey. I said no, we would not sell the knives, and he said it didn’t matter anyway.”
    Brad took a deep breath. “That was when I offered him the cabin.”
    They stared at him. Simon said: “You did what?”
    â€œI explained that we would be moving on, as soon as the snows melted. I said that if they would give us food until the spring we would give them the cabin then, and some knives, and an axe, and other valuable things. Things which were our possessions, which belonged to us.”
    Simon said: “I suppose . . .”
    Brad went on: “He said it was true these objects were ours, but only as long as the Great Spirit continued to breathe life into our mouths. Dead men, he said, had no possessions. Before the winter ended, we would be dead. Then any man might take things which no longer had an owner.”
    After a pause, Bos said: “As you told us, they are not thieves. They only starve men to death, then take their goods.”
    Curtius said: “I have had enough of this. Let us attack them, while the strength is in us. I would rather die as a soldier than as a famished rat!”
    Bos growled approval.
    Brad said: “I agree about doing something while we still have the strength. But something better than committing suicide, which is what that would amount to. One possibility would be to abandon the cabin now and head south.”
    Simon said: “That gets my vote. This place has become a death trap. And providing we don’t freeze to death, heading south means heading for the sun. It’s the best chance we have.”
    â€œExcept for one thing,” Brad said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œRed Hawk thought we might think of that. He said if we left, he would send braves to follow us. They would keep us in sight as long as we were in Algonquian lands, and when we left those lands, they would return to report our deaths. Because the next lands to the south are inhabited by the Iroquois,who kill strangers. They do this slowly, but he can be certain that within a week we will be dead. Knowing that, they will feel entitled to take possession of the cabin, and everything in it.”
    Bos said: “I will take that chance, sooner than starve here.”
    â€œI, too,” said Curtius. “And I think we will kill a few of the Iroquois before they kill us.”
    â€œI might agree,” Brad said, “if there were no alternative.”
    Simon said: “Starving to death, freezing to death, getting killed in an attack on the Algonquians, being tortured to death by Iroquois . . . not just alternatives: we have a multiple choice.”
    Brad ignored him. “North and west, Algonquians, for hundreds of