We will escape. We will escape. She puffed the promise with every footfall. Why did nervous sweat slick her body?
“We must keep going, Mary. To put as much distance between us and the farm is vital.”
From atop a sharp treeless precipice, they paused to catch their breaths. The inordinate number of coyotes howling in the distance lifted the hair off the back of her neck. Unusual. Mating season didn’t start until later in the spring. With rough woolen mittens, she rubbed her forehead. How would they defend themselves against a pack of coyotes?
Below lay a pastoral view of the Hayes farm. Quiet. Serene. She had loved the peaceful hours before the other servants rose. Sheltered from the elements, warmth, and food beckoned from the uncertain fate ahead.
“Where will we go?” asked Mary.
“My goal is to reach my cousin, Colonel Thomas Faulkner. Joshua had informed me he was stationed at Fort Oswego. I pored over and copied a map of the New York frontier in Horace’s office while he entertained Captain Snapes in the dining room last night.” She breathed a little prayer to Moira who had imparted her knowledge of the stars. She’d use the skill to forge north.
All of a sudden came horrendous cries rattling the nerves up her spine. Numerous warriors, their heads plucked clean except for a strip of hair an inch wide, cut short and brush-like, running from above the brow to the nape, scattered from the forests and surrounded the house. She and Mary froze.An attack.
You will not be immune.Joshua’s words came back to haunt.
Juliet gripped the hood of Mary’s cloak, hauled back, and the sudden motion caused her friend’s feet to fly out from under her. Both girls hit the ground with a muffled thud. With shaking hands, she pushed a ledge of snow blocking their view in front of them apart. Icy cold cut into her chin as she peered over the outcrop.
Shock robbed Juliet of speech. She lay as motionless as an iron anvil.
Servants were herded outside. The cook ran from her grotesque-painted captor.
One of the warriors directed the charge. Juliet stared at him. From the distance, his facial features were obscured. He stood a mountain of a man, a sordid creature fromDante’s Inferno.Despite the frigid temperatures, he was shirtless, wearing only moccasins and a loincloth. Blood-curdling screams rose from him. Juliet pressed her mittened hands over her ears to drown out the terrible cries of his warriors.
As the cook fled past the whipping post, her nightgown flailing like a sail, the enormous Indian threw his tomahawk. She half-turned, then fell.
Captain Snapes, fully dressed walked out onto the grounds. No one touched him.
Crammed between two warriors, Master Hayes was wrestled to the porch. “You bastards. I’m the King’s man. Snapes do something.”
Snapes laughed. With certainty, he’d known of the attack.
Impatient, the leader of the Indians yanked his tomahawk from the cook’s skull, shifted to Horace, and raised it again. The blow glanced off the side of Horace’s head, right above the ear, opening a wide scarlet gash. Master Hayes took a step forward, his mouth open in an empty cry. The giant Indian plunged his tomahawk into Horace’s skull, then raised his foot to Hayes’ back and yanked it out. Horace plummeted face first from the porch.
Mary moaned and leaned into Juliet, covering her eyes at the grisly scene.
Orpha, still in her sleeping clothes screeched and clawed as the savages dragged her across the porch, and then tied her spread-eagle across the woodpile. Like parting the sea, the leader moved through his warriors. He lifted his breechclout and straddled Orpha. Her free hand flailed, searching for her nonexistent cap to cover her baldness. When he finished, one warrior after another took their turn with her.
“Dear God,” whispered Mary.
Orpha, raped repeatedly by a number of Indians was left to the leader. He jerked a wicked knife from his waistband and cut a deep circle in her scalp from the receding hairline back from her forehead to the crown. With a tremendous jerk on the hair, he pulled the scalp off and shook it high above his head.
Juliet’s mouth opened in a voiceless scream. Unable to look away, her hand closed convulsively around her gold cross as another Indian knelt on Horace’s back and cutting his scalp free, picking up his tomahawk.
There seemed to be a dispute about the cook’s scalp with one Indian holding up his tomahawk over the other. He pushed his competitor off the cook, completed removing her scalp and shoved it into a pouch attached to his waistband.
The house was torched and the flames grew brighter, fed by the winter wind, roaring like tongues from the windows and casting blood-red outlines on the ground. The snap and hiss of the flames invaded the snow-insulated quiet of the day.
Two warriors shouted from behind the barn, and squinting, Juliet saw them pointing to footsteps printed in the snow. Through a drumbeat of shock, she heard the leader and Snapes shout to follow.
“Hurry, Mary.” Juliet helped her friend to her feet. Slipping and sliding on a deer trail, they disappeared among the thick woods, fleeing up the mountain.
At the apex, fragile snow gave way and buckled beneath them. Arms flailing in the air, everything sailed past. Juliet plummeted down a steep embankment, grabbing at rocks, branches, clawing at icy roots to break her fall. She slammed into a mucky embankment, her breath whooshing out of her as Mary crashed into her.
Bruised and sore, Juliet crawled to her feet. “Mary, are you all right?” If there were any bone breaks, they’d be doomed.
Mary stood on shaky legs. “I’m fine.”
A creek burbled, the first indication of a winter thaw. “We have no choice. We have to travel downstream. Wait here.”
