The Eden Hunter. Skip Horack

head gave a slight nod, and though again Kau protested this time he was silenced. The chief pointed at him. “It was wrong for your wife to steal from this man. Do you agree?”

      Kau could not deny the truth of that. Though the Ota shared everything among themselves, he knew that this was not the way of the village. “Yes,” he said. “That was wrong.”

      Chabo then addressed the farmer: “But you, by taking his wife you have taken all that you are owed.” The farmer began to argue but Chabo stopped him as well. “It is settled,” he said.

      The farmer was leaving the hut when Kau spoke. “One is not equal to the other,” he said.

      Chabo tilted his head, annoyed. “Explain to me what you mean.”

      “One is not equal to the other,” Kau repeated. “My wife is worth more than any amount of cassavas taken from this man.” He turned to the farmer. “I will replace with meat twice over all that you have lost. Would you accept this?”

      The farmer shrugged. “I would.”

      “But in exchange,” said Kau, “I must be allowed to bring one of your wives into my own hut. Only then will all be truly even.”

      Chabo laughed. “You are very bold.”

      Kau slapped his hands together. “Is what I suggest not an equal trade? Is a Kesa woman somehow worth more than an Ota woman?”

      “Yes,” said the farmer. “Much more.”

      Chabo started a speech but then faltered and checked his words. “I have made my decision,” he said at last. “It is time now for you to return to the forest.”

      THAT AFTERNOON KAU brought the news of Chabo’s verdict to his camp, and although there was again much anger and posturing for battle, the small band knew that to make war with the Kesa would only bring about their own destruction. “No,” Kau told the elders. “He said return to the forest, and that is what we should do.” And so it was decided.

      EARLY THE NEXT morning the Ota began their exodus. The band traveled north for several days, journeying into a part of the forest that only the oldest among them had ever visited. In this new land they built new leaf huts, and it was not long before Kau, hunting alone, heard the angry trumpetings of elephants fighting in the distance. He started for that far-off battleground in a steady trot, and the sun was setting when he finally reached them. From a downwind treetop he watched an enormous male humiliate a broken-tusked bull, then raise its trunk to celebrate the banished king’s retreat into the darkening forest.

      Kau began to stalk the solitary old bull, and at spots along the trail he would cover himself with handfuls of the elephant’s steaming dung, replacing his own smell with that of his prey as the doomed creature cut a great meaningless circle in the forest.

      On the third night he decided that the time to kill had arrived. He tracked the bull to a clearing in the forest, then watched as the weepy-eyed beast licked at an oozing gore hole. The elephant drifted off into a motionless and standing sleep, and a stray breeze rustled high branches as Kau crept across the clearing. The pale legs of the bull rose like columns in the moonlight, and through these columns Kau passed. He drove a short mahogany spear up into the elephant’s gray belly, piercing its bladder with a succession of quick jabs, then ran back into the forest as from behind him came a bellowing song of sadness and pain and rage.

      It was another night before the crippled bull finally bled out, yet another before Kau found his way back to the camp. He was clutching the severed tail of the bull, and news of this great fortune was taken by the elders as a sign from the forest. It was agreed that they would never again trade with the village of Opoku.

      THOUGH OF COURSE the meat of the elephant was one day exhausted, the forest continued to provide, and among the band this time in isolation was a period of great comfort and plenty. Fifteen full moons passed before Chabo’s taste for honey won over and he relented. The Ota were joined in their camp by a delegation from Opoku, and a terrified woman was presented to Kau. “This is the wife of the farmer,” said a Kesa warrior. “She is yours to have until morning.”

      Kau looked to his own wife Janeti. Her eyes were wet but she nodded to him.

      Although many within the band argued for the acceptance of the Kesa woman, in the end Kau would not take her. A man often thirsts for that which he is never meant to have, yet Kau felt the pull of something even greater. Pride. The woman was sent away, and ten nights later the Kesa attacked the Ota camp.

       IV

       A teeth cutting—A return to the Mississippi Territory—The remains of a buffalo—On black panthers

      THE NEXT DAY the redsticks revealed to him what they knew of the highwaymen. They had learned of these white thieves two months earlier—from a muleskinner captured north of the port city of Mobile. Facing death, hoping to save his life, the man had told them a tale of land pirates and treasure.

      The highwaymen had laid claim to a cave near the Conecuh River. Assisted by men seeking commissions—collaborators like the muleskinner himself—they targeted wealthy travelers along the federal road. In his own broken Creek the desperate muleskinner had convinced the redsticks that he knew the exact location of that hidden cave, describing a cleft in a particular broken hillside so well that he made his own survival irrelevant.

      Kau sat sweating on his horse blanket beside a dying fire, watching as the redsticks prepared to depart that safe camp for another distant blood field. A company of cursed souls doomed to spend their days cutting warpaths across borderlands, a back-and-forth revenge life of ambush then pursuit. The night before, Little Horn and Blood Girl had both asked him to join them. His answer had been no, but now, studying on the redsticks, he was less certain. In a way he envied their lives of purpose, their forever war. He himself had felt nothing at all since the killing of the boy, nothing save the blank hope that if he continued pushing across Florida he would someday find a silent corner of forest that reminded him of his home, a place he could come to treasure as much as all that had been taken away from him.

      The stallions were freed from their hobbles and Little Horn asked him again. Once more Kau explained that he intended to strike out on his own, and Blood Girl stepped forward. “You are not listening,” she said. “Morning Star believes you must come with us.”

      Kau looked over at Morning Star. The prophet was standing beside his horse, and the old gray was refusing to eat oats from the flat of his hand. Morning Star nodded, and Kau turned to Little Horn. “I have no choice?”

      “No,” said Little Horn. “In this you do not.”

      Kau knelt and began to slowly place his things into his saddlebags. He could smell a coming rain. So, he realized, it seemed that he had somehow become a slave again.

      IT WAS DRIZZLING when the redsticks finally broke camp and rode off west to kill the highwaymen. The light rain washed the very last of the clay dust from his thick hair, and steam rose from the ground. Little Horn offered him a place on his horse but he declined. His thighs were still sore and blistered from the bareback night ride of the previous week and so he swore off horses, preferred instead to follow on foot, tracking the unshod stallions alone through the damp and dripping forest.

      Several times while trailing the redsticks he considered turning around and trying to escape them. Twice he backtracked for a near mile before again changing his mind. Were he his younger self, were this a forest he knew as well as the one he had been stolen from, he thought he might have had the courage to break away from them. As it was he did not. These redsticks were not white men. If he ran he was certain that they would find him and so he kept on.

      HE WAS ANXIOUS for more real practice with the longrifle, and so when he came upon a wild cow wallowing in the muddy path he crept to within a few downwind paces of the big speckled beast and then shot it in the head. The cow sighed as it rolled over in the mud. He drew his knife and cut loose one of the backstraps, a thick length of meat