Broken Trail Read Online Free

progress toward Kings Mountain.
    All he could do, he thought, was travel as fast as possible. The sooner he delivered the message, the sooner he could return home. He did not care about the fate of Major Ferguson and his Loyal Americans, but for a rifle he would do his best.
    Only once in his life had he ever had a chance to fire agun. The warrior Swift Fox, his uncle’s friend, had owned an old muzzle-loading musket picked up from a battlefield twenty winters ago, in the days when the Oneida nation had helped the English against the French. When Broken Trail was eleven, Swift Fox had let him try to shoot with it. The noise had deafened his ear, and the kick had knocked him off his feet. Such a gun was not the stuff of his dreams.
    He admired the new breech-loading rifles that several Oneida warriors had bought from traders. Not only were these weapons lighter and more accurate than a musket, but a warrior could reload while lying under a bush. Among boys his age, only Spotted Dog owned such a rifle—a gift to celebrate his mystic vision. If Broken Trail delivered his message in time, maybe Major Ferguson would give him a gun like that.
    In the moments before sleep, Broken Trail imagined the rifle that would soon be his.
    A bugle’s blare woke him at dawn. Broken Trail blinked up at the ridgepole of the tent. He barely had time to focus his thoughts before a soldier entered, carrying another bowl of pork and beans. This soldier was older than the two who had brought him to the army camp.
    He waited until Broken Trail sat up before handing him the bowl. Instead of leaving the tent, he watched from under the brim of his forage cap while Broken Trail picked up the spoon and took his first mouthful.
    â€œSo you’re the boy who’s taking a message to the great PatFerguson. He’s a man I long to meet. I envy you, though I reckon you won’t have much chance to talk with him.”
    â€œReckon not.” Broken Trail shovelled another spoonful of beans into his mouth.
    â€œFerguson’s designed a new kind of rifle. They say it’s five times more accurate than an old firelock. There’s talk the light infantry will be outfitted with Ferguson rifles. If that happens, we still might win the war.” He heaved a sigh. “Not likely, more’s the pity.” Then he clamped his mouth shut, as if realizing too late that he should not be talking like this, even to a boy.
    But a moment later he started up again. “The officers don’t tell us anything. But we men think this company is about to be sent down south. That’s where the real fighting is going on. Virginia. The Carolinas. Georgia. With luck, I still might end up under Major Ferguson’s command.”
    Broken Trail, busily scraping the bottom of the bowl, did not answer. When he had finished the last spoonful, he set down the bowl on the folding table.
    â€œI’m ready.”
    â€œThe canoe’s waiting. It’s time to be off.”
    Fog shrouded the river. Broken Trail, sitting in the middle of the canoe, saw only whiteness all around. Nor was there anything to hear, apart from the dripping of water from the paddles.
    As the sun burned off the fog, dozens of islands came intoview. Some were large and wooded, and others just a rock with a single gnarled tree clinging by its roots. The canoe wove among them on its way to the St. Lawrence River’s south bank.
    On one island he saw an osprey’s nest, a rough platform of sticks balanced at the top of a dead pine. His friend Young Bear’s
oki
was an osprey. If Young Bear were with him now, Broken Trail would tell him about the wolverine. A wolverine must be the equal of an osprey. It was larger and fiercer, though maybe not as noble.
    Young Bear was slightly older than Broken Trail. He had completed his dream quest in the spring, three moons ago. Now he was entitled to wear his hair like a warrior, with a scalp lock into which was woven a decoration