Paskagankee Read Free

from he knew not where. He had known the missionary group would be armed; they always carried weapons when dealing with savages, but they had never before been forced to use them against this particular tribe.
    His left arm felt numb and his hand tingled violently; he knew he was badly injured. Blood covered his shoulder and ran down his chest in a great wave. He looked for the Native girl, the mother of his child, but could not find her. Smoke from the missionaries’ guns hung thickly in the air, obscuring the moonlight and casting the scene in an eerie nightmarish hue. Screams rent the night, whether from missionaries or tribesmen Stephen could not tell.
    His vision began to narrow; he found himself peering down a long tunnel and soon the black edges of that tunnel began squeezing his vision into a steadily shrinking circle. The screaming and the cries of anguish now seemed to originate from a point much farther away than they had previously, although Stephen knew that was not possible. He was lying in the middle of the battle zone. He guessed he was dying and wished he could hold his baby daughter just once.
    Then nothing.
    ***
    STEPHEN AMES OPENED HIS eyes. He was still lying on the frozen ground of New England in November. He felt incredibly, bone-chillingly cold, colder than he ever had in his entire life. He was surprised he was not dead and wondered how long he had been lying in the forest unconscious. He attempted to stand up and only then realized he could not move. Stephen knew that unless someone helped him, and soon, he was going to die. He was surprised to discover the prospect didn’t frighten him.
    Moving his head, which seemed to be the only part of his body he could convince to work properly, Stephen scanned as much of the area as he could see. Bodies littered the forest, some of them Abnaki tribal warriors and some of them missionaries; men Stephen had lived and worked with for the past three years. A few of them were moaning softly, but most lay unspeaking and unmoving. Stephen suspected the majority of them were dead. Blood was everywhere, congealing on every surface, more blood than Stephen would ever have imagined possible.
    His most pressing thought—his only clear thought, really—was for his baby. Was she still near? He didn’t think so. None of the bodies he could see on the ground appeared to be those of women; although he knew he could not see all of the dead. He hoped fervently that the Native girl and his child had somehow escaped the carnage, as unlikely as that seemed.
    Motion in his peripheral vision caused Stephen to peer down the hunting path. The smoke from the gunfire had by now cleared, and the moon shone brightly in the frigid November sky. Struggling up the path was an elderly Abnaki tribesman. Stephen had never before seen the man and that was strange; until now he thought he had met everyone in the small tribal village at least once. The man looked older than anyone Stephen had ever seen—ancient even. Lines etched his face which was haggard and drawn. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He took slow, measured steps and remained utterly silent as he reached the scene of the bloody conflict.
    The old tribesman’s arms were laden with strange-looking items like roots and cloth sacks filled with what Stephen could not imagine. At last the man reached a point roughly in the center of the carnage and set all his accoutrements on the ground in a neat pile. He still had not said a word as far as Stephen could tell.
    Stephen thought briefly about crying out and alerting the ancient Native to his presence. He knew that by doing so, he would probably seal his fate. The man would certainly kill him after what had been done to his fellow Abnaki tribal members. But Stephen didn’t care if the man killed him; he decided he would welcome death after this tragic night had gone so horribly wrong, but he was curious as to what the old man was doing all by himself in the middle