The Eden Hunter. Skip Horack

he said.

      “Well, then you go on and live free in it awhile,” said the slavecatcher. “See if it treats you any better now.”

       II

       A land forfeit—Redsticks—Florida

      DAYS OF WANDERING. He buried the slavecatcher’s scalp in a bobcat den and walked south, moving at night, following the stars to Florida. The clay that had once coated him dried into brick dust and fell away, and his skin was left stained red and itching. His breechcloth was now dyed the color of rust.

      It was easy country to traverse and at times he grew angry with himself for not bolting long before. He crossed pine flatlands that in low spots dropped off into thin finger forests of virgin oak and elm—beech, sycamore and chestnut—shady hollows where clear springs flowed and he could escape the stunning heat of the day. The cut on his shoulder from the musket ball scabbed and then healed.

      As a distraction from thoughts of Samuel and the boy, he collected arrowheads as he walked—chert bird-points and deer-points. This was land forfeited by the Creeks to the Americans at the end of the Creek civil war, but still the Indians lingered. He could see their scattered sign and surely they his, and yet one did not cause harm upon the other. A peace persisted. Some understanding that he was only a traveler passing through. A visitor laying no claim. A small man who would leave no lasting mark of any consequence, no evidence that he had ever even existed. This was a wilderness.

      HE HAD TRADED the dead sentinel’s musket and accessories for Lawson’s longrifle and hunting pouch and powderhorn. Kau brought the longrifle to his shoulder and his finger only barely reached the trigger. Though lighter than the musket, the flintlock was as long as he was from brass buttplate to muzzle. Still, he stared down the barrel and nodded, supposed that he could continue to kill at very close range and that maybe—one day and with practice—he would be able to shoot with the skill of the innkeeper, a man who could snipe a fish crow from the top branch of a cross-river cypress, tumble a running fox.

      ON HIS WALK he saw many deer, sorrel in their spring coats, and though he needed to test himself with the longrifle he thought it even more important that he move in a whisper through this strange land. He foraged for his food at dawn and at dusk, collecting ripe berries and fat white grubs, stabbing pine snakes and woodrats with a three-pronged gig sharpened from a hickory stick. He was tracking a diamondback through sugar sand one morning when he encountered an old Indian woman sitting alone near the entrance of a tortoise burrow. She was a Creek, he decided. Her lined face was the color of dark cedar, and she was wearing only moccasins and a faded British redcoat decorated with broken pieces of mirror. Though he made no effort to hide, she did not seem aware of his presence.

      He spoke out to her in the faltering Creek he had learned during his years at Yellowhammer. “Grandmother,” he asked, “is this Florida?”

      The woman gave a vague and toothless smile but said nothing in reply. Nearby a gopher tortoise—its scaly hind legs hobbled together by the end of a long rope—struggled across the sand, fighting to return to the burrow that it had been stolen from.

      He stood watching the woman, and after a while another tortoise emerged. The woman rushed forward like a statue gone living and flipped the tortoise onto its back. She tied this second tortoise to the other end of the rope and then lifted them both up so that they hung like fish on a stringer. The rope was placed atop her balding head like a tumpline, and the kicking tortoises bounced against her small hips as she disappeared down a thin scratch path that meandered through the clumps of pale green wiregrass.

      MOST NIGHTS IT was humid and hot like some darkened day and the snap of a broken stick would cut the stillness with a sound like a whipcrack. Other nights it would rain and this was in fact best because he could move through the forest trackless and without sound.

      To sleep was to dream. And to dream was to see the dead boy.

      Late afternoon. Upon rising for his tenth night of walking south he spotted a thickening thread of smoke in the near distance. He folded his horse blanket as he considered whether to keep on or investigate. Soon he would have the cover of darkness, and in the end he decided that perhaps in seeking out that fire he would come upon some clue as to whether finally, after so many nights of travel, he had at last crossed over into Florida.

      THE NIGHT BREEZE was in his face and he could smell the wood smoke as he walked. Before long he came to a clearing in the pines where pioneers had cut a shallow potato field in the poor soil. Across the way stood a small barn, and beside it a cabin was burning down to its gray-rock chimney. In the glow of the orange fire an enormous Indian was pushing himself against a bent white woman. A smaller figure leaned against a toppled middlebreaker, watching, and a man lay dead and mutilated in the nearby dust with killed daughter and killed son and killed plow mule. The shock-struck wife made no real sound as the giant forced his way inside of her.

      Kau hid himself and decided that these two Indians were Red Stick Creeks—the villains of all those Yellowhammer stories, the terrors of the federal road. The smaller Indian moved away from the middlebreaker, and Kau saw that she was a young woman. She called out to the giant and he quit with his raping long enough to slide the pioneer’s long dress free from her milky body. He threw the dress high into the air, and as it came ballooning down the redstick girl caught it. She laughed and then danced as she pulled the dress on over her head.

      He remained hidden until they took out their knives, then was turning to leave them when he saw an Indian crouched and watching him from a few feet away. Kau lifted his longrifle but this third redstick charged forward and knocked it from his hands.

      Kau was wrestled out of the forest and into the potato field. He lay sprawled in the dirt and in the firelight he saw that the full tip of the redstick’s nose was missing. The Indian was bare-chested and wore a breechcloth, beaded leggings and moccasins. A crimson war-club hung from his side and ashes swirled around him. The deformed redstick put a foot on Kau’s stomach, then called to his companions with a single whooping holler. Kau turned his head and saw the other two redsticks come running. Behind them the pioneer woman kept at her writhing. Her heels seemed to have been cut. Twice she tried to run but both times she fell.

      The redstick girl had wild brown hair that fell down past her waist, and was maybe half the age of the two men. She laughed and tugged at Kau’s breechcloth, then he heard her wonder in Creek if this tiny clay-tinged man could be the son of the master of breath himself. The cut-nosed Indian smiled and the redsticks all moved closer. Both the cutnose and the girl now held what looked to be big-bored Jaeger rifles. The giant wore only a breechcloth and moccasins, carried a red club of his own but no rifle or musket. His long face and broad chest were painted in a division of black and bright red. Like the cutnose his head was shaved. He stared at Kau and seemed never to blink.

      THAT HE WAS a negro and knew much of their language perhaps saved his life. And of course his size intrigued them. When he saw that they would not harm him he asked carefully for his longrifle, and the cutnose fired the flintlock into the air before returning it to him empty. Kau was told to wait, and so he sat alone in the potato field while the pioneer woman was at last scalped and then killed by a blow from a war-club that split her skinned head.

      LATER, ALL THREE redsticks stood facing him in the potato field but he would not look at them. He stared at the burning cabin instead until finally the girl spoke to him in Creek. “Do not be afraid,” she said. “Our war is not with you.”

      The cutnose nodded. “You are running to Florida?”

      Kau answered in Creek. “I am,” he said.

      “Then we will bring you,” said the girl. “We go there as well.”

      “I do not need that.”

      The cutnose shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is our land. And we will guide you through it.”

      THE BODIES OF the pioneers were thrown into the fire, and after the redsticks stole some oats the barn was torched as well. Kau was then led back into