Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
The Indian nodded. “I know. My brother went back to Jamestown for men
and boats and guns to go to the Paspahegh village and up the Powhatan.
He was wise with the wisdom of the white men, but I, who needed no gun,
and who would not fight against my own people, I stepped into the stream
and walked up it until past the full sun power. Then I found a broken
twig and the print of a moccasin, half hidden by a bush, overlooked when
the other prints were smoothed away. I left the stream and followed the
trail until it was broken again. I looked for it no more then, for I
knew that the Paspaheghs had turned their faces toward Uttamussac, and
that they would make a fire where many others had been made, in the
hollow below the three temples. Instead I went with speed to seek
Opechancanough. Yesterday, when the sun was low, I found him, sitting in
his lodge above the marshes and the colored river. We smoked the peace
pipe together, and I am his war chief again. I asked for the green
stone, that I might show it to the Paspaheghs for a sign. He gave it,
but he willed to come to Uttamussac with me.”
“I owe you my life,” I said, with my hand upon his. “I and Diccon”--What
I would have said he put aside with a fine gesture. “Captain Percy is
my friend. My brother loves him, and he was kind to Matoax when she
was brought prisoner to Jamestown. I am glad that I could pull off this
wolf.”
“Tell me one thing,” I asked. “Before you left Jamestown, had you heard
aught of my wife or of my enemy?”
He shook his head. “At sunrise, the commander came to rouse my brother,
crying out that you had broken gaol and were nowhere to be found, and
that the man you hate was lying within the guest house, sorely torn by
some beast of the forest. My brother and I followed your trail at once;
the town was scarce awake when we left it behind us,--and I did not
return.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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