Original Death Read Online Free

expressions. He knelt at the last body in the line, that of a teenaged youth, and saw the dark pool on the packed earth under his head. The back of his skull had been crushed. He looked about the smithy. A heavy wooden spoke lay on the earthen floor, stained red at one end. The smith’s hammer that lay on the anvil still held a sheen of blood.
    Duncan closed the youth’s eyes then stood. Eight dead, plus the man in Conawago’s lap. They were all of the woodland tribes, and all but theman Conawago embraced were dressed in European-style clothes. He bent over each again, seeing now that every head had the same pool of blood under it. The blood was not yet dry, meaning the killings had taken place less than two or three hours earlier. With a chill he realized they had not died at the same time but in sequence. They had waited in line, with no trace of fear or alarm on their faces as, one by one, their skulls had been crushed from behind.
    Only the man with Conawago was different. He was clearly older than the others and wore deerskin leggings gartered with strips of rabbit fur. The sleeveless waistcoat that he wore over his worn linen shirt had small bits of fur sewed into it. His long black hair was tied at the back. A bright bloom of blood leaked over his heart. His dead, defiant eyes were fixed on a carved wooden medallion on the earthen floor beside him. Down his left cheek was a vertical line of four small, intricately worked tattoos. A fish, a deer, a bear, and a snake, in a distinctive style Duncan had never seen except on Conawago, who bore identical images, in the same sequence, on his neck and shoulders. Conawago had found Hickory John.
    Duncan’s heart seemed to rip out of his chest as he watched Conawago rock with his dead nephew in his lap. For the first time in half a century he embraced someone of his own flesh and blood, and the flesh was now growing cold. There were no words to say. The grief sliced deep into the Nipmuc’s soul. This was a wound that would never heal.
    He scooped up the medallion on the floor and backed away. Duncan was still numb as he retreated out of the building and stood gazing vacantly at the little settlement. Finally he was stirred out of his paralysis by the caws of the gathering crows. A long sobbing shout left his throat and, suddenly enraged, he hurled stones until the birds flew away. Slowly his eyes focused again, studying the village with cold deliberation. Lifting his gun from where he had dropped it, he began exploring the other structures.
    The sparsely furnished houses were empty, with no evidence of the day’s horror. A loaf of bread stood on a table in the first, waiting to be sliced. A bowl of peeled apples sat beside a piecrust in the kitchen ofanother. Little corn cakes made in the Iroquois fashion lay charred on a flat stone by a hearth, the ashes in the big fireplace cool to the touch.
    He paced along the road, studying the tracks now. It was the supply road to the British forts, the only road west of the lake, carved out of the wilderness shoreline after hostilities with the French had broken out. The ruts of wagons pulled by horse and ox teams were crusted into the road, some of the tracks less than a day old. Faintly visible were the prints of the studded footwear favored by heavy infantry, several days old.
    Set back from the road was a building he had taken to be a small barn. But he saw now the worn path that led to it and the stone chimney that rose up from the far side of its shake roof. Well-tended beds of blooming asters and daisies flanked its narrow entry. The door was ajar. He pushed it open with his foot and saw four benches with narrow rough-hewn tables in front of each, facing a larger table at the back. Small slates lay on the smaller tables. It was a schoolhouse.
    He counted eight student slates on the tables. Two held Bible verses transcribed in neat hands, two showed numbers and simple stick figures, two more had crudely formed