Chapter 11

In the morning, Walla’s advice fresh in my mind, I stood up proud and shouted out to speak to Ahanu. All the braves came over, surprised that I could speak their language. They sensed I had something important to say.

“Ahanu, you snake,” I spat angrily in the Indian tongue. “You have not bested me in battle yet! You would not win if you were in front of me, now that I know you are my enemy!”

Ahanu looked surprised at my outburst, but also amused. “Why would I fight you?“ he taunted, “I have already won.”

Rage overtook me and I clenched my fists and limbered up. I had forgotten that my wrists were bound and I effortlessly broke the twine that bound me! I felt my shirt rip. I looked around wildly, seething with rage, and saw the braves guarding us watching me in awe. I tugged and pulled off the shreds of my shirt and bared my chest for all to see the muscles I had gained from hammering. Ahanu, a dozen paces from me, stepped back involuntarily. Everyone sensed his fear.

The other captive Indians stood up now and started hopping lightly on their toes and hollering encouragingly. The braves around the camp started beating their spears on the ground and stamping too, in rhythm, working everyone up to a frenzy. All could sense there was a fight, and this fight was between Ahanu and me – and between Ahanu and me alone.

Ahanu looked around for support wildly, then grabbed at a nearby brave’s spear. The brave didn’t let go, but instead looked at Ahanu coldly. There was a sense of destiny, of valor, as I approached the man who had once been my best friend.

“She is not from good family anyway,” Ahanu suddenly addressed the baying crowd, who hushed slightly to listen to his words. “Perhaps you can have her.“ He waved towards my wife and child dismissively.

I kept moving slowly forward, watching him carefully. I was not surprised when he pulled his knife and waved it at me. That was the knife he had just the day before gutted Walla with. I kept getting closer.

“We wrestle,” I said to the crowd, “no knives or stones.”

“I always beat you at wrestling,” Ahanu laughed, but there was a falseness to his humor.

“Not now, now it is to the death,” I retorted, my blood simmering but my mind clear. I knew what I had to do. It was the same clarity that had come over me when I had killed the bailiff. Some people, the stupid people, can have a clear head when faced with mortal danger. I was one of those stupid people. I didn’t even think about losing. I could see, though, that Ahanu was scared. I was really close now and he was still waving that knife at me.

“No knives, “ I turned held my arms out wide and and addressed the ring of braves around us, “no knives, only bare hands and bare honor.”

The cacophony of baying braves, both captors and captive, was deafening. Ahanu looked around at the braves he had so recently led, his eyes wide in fear. “Put down the knife,” Walla was shouting clearly, “Put down the knife!”

I looked at Mataoka one last time, knowing that I might not see her ever again, but somehow not afraid. As I looked at her I knew I was moving diagonally towards Ahanu who was still facing down the crowd around us. He hadn’t noticed me sidling up to him, closing the distance. Then I lunged, kicking up sand in his face as I leaped the final few feet.

Ahanu’s knife came up towards me in a blur, but I was already committed and I felt the burning hot pain of the side of it striking against my ribs as my knee landed in Ahanu’s stomach and sent him sprawling. I went with him and sat on him, pinning his hand out away from his body to keep the knife away from me. He tried to bend his arm to bring the knife towards me but I managed to get my iron grasp on his forearm and pin it down with all my strength. Then I felt his puny punches trying to hit my head but being deflected by my muscled neck. I used my free hand to pummel his face until he went slack and his hands fell limply outspread. I lifted his head by the hair and slammed it down on the hard, sandy ground a couple of times for good measure before I grabbed the knife from his open hand and got up off of him.

There was silence all around. I glanced at a shocked, relieved Mataoka cradling our precious child. Then I looked over at Walla, who was sitting up intently. Walla caught my eye and drew his finger across his neck in a very clear instruction to me. Without thinking about it, I leaned down over the vanquished and gave the necessary coup de grace. There was, I realized, no way I dared let Ahanu wander the earth and wait out his revenge.

The braves still stood around me, spears in their hands. I looked around firmly. “Mataoka is my squaw, “ I declared, “and no man can take her from me.” Then I went over to her, picking her up as she held our son, and twirled her around victoriously. Then, the blood seeping from the gash in my side, I fainted.

I could sense I had been unconscious a lot longer the second time I came around to find Mataoka leaning over me lovingly. She saw I was awake and bent in for a good, long, wet kiss, the salt of her tears reaching my mouth as our lips locked. This time, nobody grabbed her away from me. She sat up, gasping for breath, and then hugged my aching chest. I loved the familiar sweet soapy smell of her hair again. I looked around, checking on Harvey sitting up near us, watching me back.

My wound, like Walla’s, wasn’t life threatening and Mataoka and I left with a recovering Walla and the other braves when they returned to their village. They took the raiding party as captives and made them carry our iron ingots. They would be ransomed back to their tribe in the autumn after the harvest. We never told any of them about our cabin, and they were all assuming we were living in what was just our summer camp with the ore works.

Ma and pa were happy to see us again, and Eliza was ecstatic. There was lots of confusion when we tried to describe the Indian battle we had been embroiled in, and Ahanu’s demise, but then the English didn’t understand our Indians at all. The Indian chief made a formal ceremony naming me a warrior worthy of leading a raiding or rescue party, and the other braves who I could now talk with – brokenly – were slowly getting to know and like me, too. It was as though, as my pa joked, I was going native on them.

Mataoka and I slept in the barn instead of with the Indians as Mataoka was keen to be called Martha and make our lives more English again. Eliza went for many walks carrying little Harvey in a papoose board and I was powerfully reminded of how Mataoka and Eliza used to bring picnics out to me when, as a kid, I was working in the fields. Had Mataoka singled me out as her husband even then? I liked to imagine so, and wished I’d had the sense to look at her that way all those years ago, too.

I took Mataoka to meet and greet the neighbors, and sensed a disapproving distance when we came across the tipsy Reverend. He still didn’t approve of whites marrying Indians, not even those as pretty and refined as my Martha. I smiled every time someone called her that. But the Reverend’s wife was most welcoming, and reminded us to get little Harvey baptized and so Mataoka went into a happy frenzy thinking about the coming Sunday service.

I was out in the fields with pa, picking at and sniffing the soil with him, when the new bailiff came. He was doing his usual rounds. Pa looked at me and his face hardened but he said nothing. Like me, he was surely reliving the violence of the previous bailiff’s last visit.

“I hear you are squatting.” The bailiff sat high on his horse and pointed accusingly at me.

“Oh, I’m sure you two can come to some agreement,” pa interjected lightly, but his eyes didn’t smile with the rest of his face.

The bailiff, a younger man, slipped down from his saddle and approached me confidently. “Oh, I’m sure we two can come to some agreement,” he agreed.