Peering through thickening spring underbrush, the parts of his body not concealed hidden by the natural camouflage of his clothing, the man in the fur hat watched the three figures moving alongside the small stream fixedly. The shadows of a bright midday sun swirled around the feet of the figures but also dappled the dense woods, helping the man remain concealed.
Sam MacLeod, an experienced hunter and trapper who had been working this area west of Lake Erie for many years, was quite familiar with the local peoples, their languages, their culture, the unique features of their costumes. All three of the people he was watching were, by the way they wore their hair and the designs of their loincloths--their only garments other than moccasins--members of the Huron tribe, a locally powerful group that he and his companion had had many dealings with in the past and were on generally good terms with. They were wearing war-paint, which meant they were looking for enemies--very possibly Senecas or Algonquins, commonly but intermittently enemies of the Huron. One of them, however, puzzled him, and he watched from concealment for a little longer.
The one that commanded his attention, a young woman, was not like any Huron he had ever seen before. Her hair was braided in the way the Huron women fixed their locks for hunting or battle--and it was not really particularly rare for a Huron maiden to take to the warpath or go hunting, even though these were primarily male purviews--but this girl's hair was brown, her skin light if deeply tanned, and her eyes hazel. The other two, one man and another woman, looked like very typical Hurons, although the Indian woman, like the white girl, was more than commonly attractive.
Deciding there was no point in hiding and observing any further, Sam rustled the brush to give the trio the message that someone was there, then stood up. "Ne,a,ta,rugh," he said, pointing to his own chest. "Friend."
The two Indians and the white girl stared for a moment, clearly startled by his unexpected appearance so close to them. Then, without a further word, they charged toward him with piercing shrieks, their war-hammers lifted to deliver lethal blows.
"No!" Sam cried, although he and his companion had their own weapons ready--perfectly reasonable precautions in the wild frontier lands in 1754. "No, no! Ne,a,ta,rugh, ne,a,ta,rugh! Friends, friends!"
The Indians--and the white girl--paid not the slightest attention to his words. They came on, the man in the lead, the Indian girl behind him, and the white girl a step or so behind her. Sam backed up, bumped into his companion, side-stepped and continued backing away, shouting at them the whole time, trying to get them to stop.
They did not stop. With fierce war-cries they came on, slowed but not stopped by the tangled brush separating them from Sam and his companion, war-hammers more than capable of crushing a man's skull waving in the air. The flintlock pistols in Sam's hands--and in his companion's hands--did not seem to deter them at all. As Sam and his companion separated themselves by a few feet, the tiny war-party also split, the man going for Sam's companion while the two girls came straight for him.
As the Indian maiden came for him, her eyes wild with battle-rage, Sam sighed. He simply did not have a choice, he had to either fire at her or try to conquer her in hand to hand combat. He could in no way presume she was unskilled with her war-hammer, and, beyond that, the white girl, looking just as fierce, was right behind her--and his double-barreled muzzle-loading pistols only allowed him four shots. Continuing to yell--and hearing his companion adding to the cacophony--he aimed the pistol in his left hand at the Indian girl's bare chest. He shook it at her threateningly, but, seemingly unconcerned about her own safety, she came on, and at that point she was less than five yards away. Finally, with another sigh, he fired.
The thunder of the black-powder explosion seemed to shake the forest, but even amid that noise Sam heard the wet thud of lead striking bare flesh. Bluish smoke filled the air between them, and a gout of bright red liquid erupted from the girl's right breast. Stopped and thrown off-balance by the impact of the heavy lead ball, the girl struggled for a moment to retain her balance. She was successful and she came on, in spite of the blood streaming down her chest. Sam could see her face clearly, he could see her now-bloodstained teeth. He knew she probably understood that she was dying, but she was determined to take him with her.
He was just as determined that she not succeed in doing that. Switching his finger to the other trigger of the flintlock, he fired again, and again was half-deafened by the thunder of the weapon but even so heard the smack of the ball against the girl's bare body. This round tore a sizable hole in her upper abdomen, just below her ribcage on her right side, and dark blood gushed out of her. Again thrown back, she again managed to stay on her feet--until the white girl, coming up behind her and determined to get into the fight, crashed into her.
The Indian girl was knocked forward hard, and somehow managed to put a stride in. She swung her war-hammer at Sam's head; he ducked her blow, barely. Her strength was fading fast, though, and as she tried to draw her arm back for another strike, the tomahawk fell from her hand. She dropped to her knees and stared up at him.
"Yung,squa,his," she muttered in the Huron tongue--"I hate you." Then she looked down at herself. "E,hye,ha,honz," she murmured--"I am dying." Her words faded and she fell gracefully forward, rolling onto her side as she sank into the leaves covering the forest floor.
Sam had no chance to even watch; the white girl, looking just as maniacal and wielding a sharp-pointed tomahawk that if anything looked even more lethal, was coming at him and screaming at the top of her voice. He tried yelling at her to stop, but at the same time he readied his other pistol to shoot her if she refused--which by then seemed almost a foregone conclusion.
But then, fate took a hand. As she stepped over the body of the Indian girl, the Indian's leg flexed, and just by chance caught the white girl's ankle between her thigh and calf. Looking startled, the white girl careened to the side off-balance as she jerked her foot free. Her luck was not good; as she struggled for control, a branch slipped between the strap of her loincloth and her hip, and when she tried to jerk free the strap broke, leaving her totally naked except for her moccasins and throwing her more off-balance than before. Even so, for a moment it seemed she would be able to regain her balance, but, before she could, the side of her head slammed against a tree trunk. Her war-hammer went spinning away, disappearing into the underbrush. Sam saw her eyes roll back in her head and she sprawled limply on the ground.
Knowing that even if she regained consciousness quickly, it would take her a moment to locate a weapon, Sam looked around to see how his companion had fared against the Indian warrior. To his alarm he saw that they were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Sam's friend had managed to shoot the warrior twice, blood was streaming from his body and he was spitting out clouds of it as he fought for breath, but enough of his strength remained that he was trying to free his arm from the other man's grip so that he could deal a fatal blow with his tomahawk.
He did not get the chance. Sam rushed to the struggling pair, held his remaining pistol two inches from the man's side, and fired. This time there was not just the powder explosion and the thud of lead against bare skin, there was also the loud crack of shattering ribs. The Huron warrior threw his head back, made an odd sound as if something hard was rattling inside his chest, then fell over to the side. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose; his body jerked violently, several times, then became still.
After determining that his companion was unhurt, Sam rushed back over to the white girl. She had not moved. He examined her quickly, saw that she was breathing regularly and freely, and there was no blood in her hair. Using a strip of leather, he quickly and expertly bound her hands. By that time his companion had gotten to his feet and rejoined them.
"Damn it," the man muttered. "They're Hurons, leastways two of them were, why'd they come at us like that?"
"Wish I knew," Sam answered. He pulled the white girl up to a sitting position and propped her against a tree. "Maybe this one can tell us."
"She's got a story to tell, that's for sure. She ain't no Injun, what's she doing running around out here half-naked?"
Sam grinned. He let his eyes wander over her long shapely legs, her flat belly, her gently rounded breasts. ""Well, she's all naked now, and you gotta admit the view is pretty good!"
"You got that right."
Sam pulled a rag out of his pack. "Here, go wet this down in the creek. She's gonna have a headache when she wakes up."
And, a few minutes later, while Sam was pressing the cool wet cloth against her head, the girl's eyes flickered open. Initially she looked terrified, and Sam could only grin. He knew what he looked like. Heavily bearded and mustached, his hair long, wearing a long heavy coat trimmed with fur, heavy leather chaps, thick boots, and a hat made out of the skin of a mink with the mink's tail dangling from the side, he looked as much like a mutant bear as like a man.
But then, seconds later, her look changed to one of defiance. She started to struggle. "Don't," Sam advised in his broken and ungrammatical Huron. "You can't get free, you'll only hurt your wrists."
She stared for a moment. "I speak your language, white man," she snarled in English. "Do not torture mine!"
"Well," Sam said with a laugh, "that's gonna make things easier. First off, my name's Sam, Sam MacLeod. This feller over here is my partner, his name's Buck. Now, his nephew was my best friend, so I usually call him what his nephew called him, Uncle Buck. Now that you know who we are, how's about telling us who you are?"
Glaring sullenly, she tried to get loose from her bonds. As Sam has said, they didn't yield. "What does it matter," she said finally, "who I am? You're going to kill me anyway. Why don't you just go ahead and do it?"
"Ain't really got no plans," Sam informed her, "to kill you. We--"
"You killed my sister and her husband!" she cried. "White man!" she spat these last two words as if they were a curse.
Sam blinked. "Well, if you mean these two Hurons, well, aye, we killed them. But that was just because they were trying to split open our heads with their tommy-hawks. Didn't you hear me say 'ne,a,ta,rugh'--'friend'--when we first stood up?"
"Lies, always lies from white men!"
"Weren't no lie, we've always been on friendly terms with the Huron." He gestured toward the dead girl lying on the ground a few yards away. "And you say, this was your sister?" The girl nodded. "Well," Sam went on, scratching his beard, "she looks to me like she's an Injun. You, on the other hand, in spite of the way you keep using 'white man' as a cuss word, look like a white girl to me."
"I am not! I am Huron!"
"Speak good English, too." He nodded. "I think I get it, I know the Huron and their ways pretty well. So let me put it this way: you weren't always a Huron, were you?"
The girl hesitated. "What does it matter? No, I was not."
"Now lemme guess again. The Huron killed your folks, and--"
"They did not!" She stared at him, a challenging look on her face. Then she calmed down a little and merely looked sullen. "My... parents," she began, "and my two brothers and I, we were traveling on the river in a canoe." She pursed her lips and closed her eyes. "I remember, we came around a bend in the river, we were in shallow water, very fast water. Suddenly in front of us was this big brown thing, and I did not know until we hit it that it was a bear. It attacked us, it tore the canoe apart, it killed my parents. My brothers were swept away in the fast water, I never saw them again. I got hold of a branch and I was hanging on. The Hurons found me there. A couple adopted me, raised me as their own."
"I see," Sam said. "Making you Huron. And this girl--"
"Was their daughter. My sister."
"How old were you when this happened?" Buck asked.
The girl glanced at him. "Eleven."
"And what," Buck went on, "was your name then? Do you remember?"
She glared again. "My name among the whites," she snarled, "was Wendy Burnette. It is not my name now. My name now, in your tongue, means 'Treasure given to us by the river.'"
"Wendy," Buck repeated. He looked her up and down. "Little naked Wendy..."
"Next question," Sam said. "Why'd you attack us?"
"You are whites!" she almost shrieked. "Ne,mat,re,zue! Enemies!"
"Well, now, first off, with all due respect Miss Wendy," Sam went on in a calm voice, "I'm probably by blood a lot less white than you are. My father was a Scot, but my mother was Cherokee--Tsalagi in your tongue, the 'People of the Land of the Caves.' My pop named me Sam. My mother called me Redsnake Walkingstick. Kinda a mouthful. So--"
"Deghsee,re,noh!" Wendy spat at him.
Sam merely laughed again. "Yes, well, ain't the first time I've heard someone call me a devil. But you still ain't told us why you attacked us."
"English!"
"Not really. Close, though. So?"
"English, redcoats, attacked us! Burned three villages. Burned my village!"
He drew back, startled. "They did? Why?"
"You know why! The Huron have a treaty with the Frenchmen. The redcoats and the Frenchmen, they are at war."
Sam turned to look at Buck, who just shrugged. "We been out too long," he said. "Didn't know about this."
"Lies!" Wendy screamed. "You are English, you burned my village! My husband was killed, my parents were killed!"
"It ain't never wise," Sam mused, "to call a Scot English. Or a Cherokee, for that matter. I think we're down to it here, though. Your village was about wiped out, and so you and your sister went out hunting for English to take vengeance. Yes?" Wendy didn't answer, she just glared.
"Well," Buck said after a moment, "I 'spect the next question is, what are we going to do with her?"
"Could just let her go," Sam suggested.
"Yes, let me go, let me get my war-hammer!"
"She ain't making that sound like too good an idea," Buck observed.
"No, she's not. How about taking her to the Huron village over near the Auglaize river? We've traded with them a lot--"
"Yes. When there wasn't a war going on. Might be kinda dangerous to walk in there right now, Sam. Maybe we ought to head down to Kaintuckee for a while."
"Yes, you're right. Still don't answer what to do with our naked Wendy here."
"Well," Buck said, rubbing his chin, "here's what I think. Her parents might be dead. but she's probably got some relatives somewhere. We could take her back to Ohio--it's on the way down to Kaintuckee."
"No! You can't take me back to the whites! No!" Then she stopped, and her eyes became slits. "No, yes, that's good, do that. I can say how horrible it was to live with savages. They'll let me go, they'll let me buy a rifle." She smiled darkly. "And then I can come tracking you, I can avenge my sister!"
Sam stared at her. "You are not," he observed, "helping."
"Kill me, then," she said challengingly. "Kill me, reunite me with my husband in the land beyond the mists." She pushed her torso up toward him. "Shoot me, right here, right now!" He didn't move. "Coward," she hissed.
"No," he answered. "I just don't wanna kill you." His eyes scanned down her body. "Well, mostly I don't. I--"
"You do not have the stomach for it! We do! We do, Sam MacLeod! You should have seen what happened to the last Seneca warrior we captured!"
"I know all about the tradition of torturing captives the Huron and the Iroquois tribes follow," Sam told her, shaking his head. "We ain't Senecas or Oneidas, we--"
"We found a homestead," Wendy went on, interrupting him. "Ten days ago." She smiled, and her smile looked darker than ever. "A man named Jacob."
Sam looked surprised. "Jake Brown? Tall man, blond wife, three pretty daughters?"
"Yes. They are all dead, Sam MacLeod. All dead. We killed them all, every one."
"Damn!" Buck yelled. "Those were good people! Especially Lizbeth! And Mary Ruth!"
"Now," Sam said, "you are lying. If you had killed the Brown family, you'd have taken their guns. Some of them, anyway."
"There was a fire. The powder--it burned."
"All of it? They didn't try to defend themselves at all? Don't sound right, Wendy."
"They welcomed us in. They said they did not know about the war, about the burning of our village and the killing of our people. They did not know our intent until my sister's husband split Jacob Brown's head open with his war-hammer!"
"You mean to tell me," Buck said, his anger rising visibly, "that you walked in there like you were their friends and then, once you were inside, suddenly attacked them?"
"Yes!" Wendy shot back. She smiled again. "We could take our time, then, with the women. One of the girls, a little pretty one with black hair--I think she was called Mary Ruth--I split her belly open with my knife and played with her insides. She took a long time to die. I made sure of that."
"No," Sam said slowly, "you didn't do that, you--"
"You killed them all?" Buck demanded. "All?"
"All," Wendy assured him, nodding. "The mother, with the yellow hair, my sister killed her. The girl who looked like her, with yellow hair, she died too quick, she tried to run away. The one with the dark brown hair, my sister's husband burned her outside the cabin. And the little one with the black hair, the one I cut open."
The two men were silent for several long seconds. Finally, Sam turned to Buck. "You believe her?"
Buck nodded. "I do. She described them all perfectly, didn't she? Damn it, they burned Lizbeth alive!"
"They do that," Sam agreed. "So do the Iroquois. Can't get enough of burning one another alive."
"Now we do have to kill her, Sam."
Sam nodded. "Aye. Trouble is, that's what she wants. All her Huron kin are dead. She wants to join them."
"So?"
"No payback in that."
"She don't have to go fast."
"She don't." Sam rose, went to one of the packs he'd left in the brush when they'd first spotted the Hurons, and dug inside it for a few seconds. He then came back with a handful of brass tubes and an object made from carved wood. "See these, Wendy?" he said, crouching in front of her.
"Yes. What are they?"
"Well," Sam said, holding up one of the little tubes, "I guess I sorta invented these. I call 'em 'power loads.' You hook one up to this wood handle here--you see? It has a hammer on it, and a trigger--and the load's got a bit of powder, a little ball, and wadding inside. What I do with 'em is, I use 'em to quickly dispatch the beavers and mink we trap--I don't like to see no animal suffer, it's part of the way my Injun mother and her family brought me up." He fitted the brass tube to the handle. "See, it's easy. Now it's ready to fire."
He then aimed the tube at Wendy's naked belly and pulled the trigger.
The miniature gun went off with a loud pop. Wendy's body jerked, her eyes flew wide open, she looked amazed. Slowly, she looked down at herself; there was a little hole above her navel, leaking blood.
"They won't," Sam noted, "kill you quick." He offered the handle and a fresh load to Buck. "Your turn," he said.
Buck grinned, moved in close, and shot her in her left breast, just above her nipple. She jerked again as more blood spouted out.
"Yes," Wendy growled, looking down at her breast. "I like it, give me more! I'll show you how a Huron takes torture!"
"You'll have that chance," Sam said, his voice low. He held her right breast for a moment, teased the nipple until it began to get a little erect. Then, while still holding her breast, he fired the lead ball right into the center of her nipple. She went stiff, her eyes closed, her mouth tight.
"More," she hissed.
The two men gave her more, shooting her five or six times in each breast, two or three times in each thigh, and a dozen times in her belly, taking turns and taking their time. Finally, Sam pushed her legs apart and told Buck to hold on to one of her ankles.
"We'll see," he said, "how you like this one." With that he started pushing the tip of the little brass tube up into her vagina. She looked down at it, then back at his face--and he fired.
Her body went utterly rigid; blood started to flow immediately. Now, she could not hide her pain. Not only had the lead ball pierced her most intimate parts, but the flash of the powder had burned her inside.
Sam watched her squirm for a few seconds. "Time to end this," he said. "And time for me to do what I like best..."
"You're perverted, Sam," Buck said with a grin.
"Look who's talking."
Sam then drew out his hunting knife and moved in close to Wendy, put his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her body toward his a little. To his surprise she almost cuddled against him, pressing her bare body against the rough hardness of his coat. "No way you coulda known this," he told Wendy, "but I get a lot of pleasure out of knifing a naked woman. I guess I been looking forward to this."
She stared at his face. "Just do it..."
He smiled, shook his head, and drove the knife into her lower belly, burying the blade. Her body arched up but she made no sound, she just kept staring at him. Very slowly, he started twisting the blade inside her, and her blood came gushing out. She winced, but she kept staring at him fixedly.
Until Buck, kneeling on the other side of her, stabbed his knife into her left side under her ribs. Taken by surprise she gave a little cry, but almost immediately she suppressed it. She kept wincing and moving her legs back and forth as the two men kept moving their blades inside her.
But, soon, she was starting to fade, and Sam recognized it. "Gonna lose her in a minute," he said. "She's bleeding to death. Too easy for her. Let her drown." With that, he jerked his knife out of her belly and stabbed it into her right breast, piercing her lung. Understanding, Buck did the same--except that his knife went into her left breast. She squirmed harder, and, after just a few seconds, she started gasping for breath--but her lungs were filling with blood and there was none to be had. The men held their knives inside her chest while her body bounced. After a couple of long minutes, she suddenly relaxed, and her eyes began to glaze. The men then pulled out their blades. Standing up, Buck started unbuttoning his pants.
"What're you doing?" Sam asked. Wendy's head was resting on his shoulder as if they were lovers.
"Well," Buck said, "I thought maybe I'd defile the body a little before she gets all stiff."
"And you called me a pervert! I'm not going to let you do that, Buck!"
Buck looked crestfallen. "Why not?"
"Because," Sam said with a grin that really did make him look like a devil, "I've got a mind to do a little defiling myself!"