Chapter 6

At last, they had located the village they were looking for. Turtle had asked about buying the girl, but, to his surprise, the family who now had her wanted to keep her. The man wanted to raise her as a sex slave, and he was willing to invest the necessary time and effort into the project. He figured that he would only have to wait for four more years before she could be useful in that capacity. When he heard that, Ed was ready to rush into the village and attack the man without waiting. Joe and Turtle were able to hold him back only with the promise that they would all go to rescue Elizabeth that night.

Ed was a bundle of nervous energy for the rest of the day, so Joe and Turtle made use of that by having him stand watch while they got some sleep. They ate a light supper and did some exercises to loosen up their muscles in preparation for any fighting that they might have to do when they got to the village.

Turtle knew which hut contained the girl, so they knew where to go for their prize. The hut was not at the edge of the village, so that made things a little more difficult. All three men were adept at creeping silently through the woods, so they had no trouble approaching the village, but the situation changed when they got to the cleared area occupied by the huts.

Turtle led the way because he knew which hut they were aiming for. Fortunately, there was very little moonlight that night, and clouds helped even more, but there was still quite a bit of open ground to cover between shadows dense enough to hide them. Ed's clothes were dark enough to provide the extra cover that he needed to make up for his lack of skill in moving over open ground.

Joe's clothes were light in color, so his friends were expecting him to have some trouble, but both of them were surprised to find Joe standing beside them next to the target hut. Neither one had seen him move, and they had been expecting him. Joe truly lived up to the sobriquet of "White Ghost." From that point on, Turtle firmly believed that Joe was touched by the war spirits.

Turtle had not seen the inside of this particular hut, but all Nipmuck houses were built along the same lines, so he had no doubt how the interior was arranged. There would be a fire pit in the center of the hut and sleeping mats would be arranged on the packed dirt floor to each side of the entrance. Usually, the man and his favorite wife slept on one mat and the other wives slept on separate mats, all located near the wall of the round structure. Various possessions would be hung on the wall or piled on the floor near the wall. Any young children slept with their mothers on the same mat, and older children had their own sleeping mats. The size of a hut denoted how many people occupied it, and this hut was only of moderate size. This suggested that the people inside were of relative low status because the man could only afford one or two wives.

Turtle used his knife to slit the skin of the hut wall. He made a cut only large enough to see through. Ah, he was lucky and his slice had not wound up behind anything hanging on the wall to block his view. He saw a sleeping mat occupied by two adults, and there was one more mat with two people: a woman and a child. With only one child in the hut, that had to be Elizabeth.

Turtle extended the cut in the wall all the way to the ground and made another cut across the top to form a kind of door. Joe held Ed back while Turtle crept into the hut to try to steal the child without waking anyone. The child was sleeping beside the woman, but not actually touching her, so the little girl was easy to pick up without disturbing the sleeping woman. Elizabeth did not even show any signs of waking when she was first picked up, but that changed as soon as Turtle handed the baby through the recently made opening in the wall.

Turtle handed Elizabeth to Ed, and that was when Elizabeth chose to wake up. Ed must have jostled her, or something similar, because she woke up complaining as only a small child does—at the top of her voice! This was enough to wake the woman sleeping with the child, and the woman saw Turtle just exiting the newly made door.

The woman screamed a warning and reached for her knife. Her scream also woke up both the man and the woman sleeping on the other mat. Between the two, there was a few moments of confusion, and that was long enough for Turtle to complete his escape. The first woman had not made any attempt to attack Turtle; her reach for her knife had only been a gesture of self protection.

Not so for the man. He grabbed his tomahawk and threw it at Turtle, who was just visible completing his escape from the hut. Fortunately, the throw of the tomahawk was awkward enough that Turtle was only struck by the handle and not the blade or spike, but that was all the encouragement Turtle needed to move as fast as possible.

The man in the hut shouted a warning of a raid to the village as he quickly picked up his war knife and ran to grab his fallen tomahawk. This man was wise enough to look through the newly cut door for enemies before he rushed out. He was able to catch a glimpse of the three heroes as they rushed into the woods in the early part of their escape.

The naked man, carrying only his knife and tomahawk was soon joined by six more men of the village, all dressed as he was. The first man shouted something akin to "FOLLOW ME!" and rushed after the fleeing heroes with their burden of the small child.

Ed was able to make surprisingly good speed through the woods while he was still carrying Elizabeth. Joe had told him, "Just run anywhere you can make good speed! We will follow you!" Joe's plan was to escape first and to return to John's Crossroads second. Therefore, Ed ran as fast as he could while maintaining his balance through the very dark woods. He did bump a few bushes and small saplings, but he never crashed into a tree large enough to cause him trouble.

Joe and Turtle ran to Ed's rear to guard him from attack. There was no question that someone running unburdened with a child could make better time than Ed ever could, even running as fast as he could manage under the circumstances. As Ed ran, Joe and Turtle would pause a moment to assess the rate of advancement of the pursuit before speeding up to rejoin Ed on his mad dash.

Oops! They had come to a small lake. It was easy to see the opposite shore of the lake, even in the poor light, but the lake was certain to be deep enough to require swimming if they did not have a boat. Since they did not have a boat, they had to run either to the right or to the left to continue their escape. Without a pause, Ed turned left and ran along the shore. Along here, the trees did not grow as far as the water, so he had a bit freer path to run in. Unfortunately, this would also make it easier for his pursuers to see and follow him.

Joe and Turtle made a warrior's assessment of the situation and ran back toward their pursuers to give Ed even more time to escape. Each man carried his knife in his left hand and his tomahawk in his right; Turtle was standing to Joe's left when they finally stopped running.

The pursuers were running in single file, but fairly close together, so it was easy to know exactly where they were. Joe and Turtle waited in ambush for the enemy to get to them. The first man burst through the trees and ran directly into Turtles tomahawk. Turtle used the blade to catch the man in the chest just to the left of the breastbone. The blade was aligned with the ribs, so it entered the man's chest without hindrance. The blade tore up the man's left lung and cut enough of the heart that he was dead in only a few seconds. Turtle had his blade free of the dead man before he had time to fall to the ground.

The second man had a similar experience with Joe's knife, except the knife entered the man's gut. The point was aimed up enough so that the point just flicked a small cut in the man's heart, but Joe did not wait for verification of that as he whipped the tomahawk around to cut into the man's spine just where it joined the skull. This completed the kill, but Joe was delayed slightly by having to pause to pull his weapons from the body of the dead man.

This pause gave time for the third man in line to reach for Joe with his knife in an effort to gut his victim. Joe was off balance enough that he would have been seriously injured if Turtle had not chopped at the attacker's arm with his tomahawk. The blade cut deeply into the man's upper arm, nearly severing the bone. This deflected the stabbing attack enough that it only scratched Joe's belly, but it was enough for Joe to know that he had barely missed being seriously wounded. Joe now had enough time to recover and make his own stab into the man's neck, severing the carotid artery and most of the muscles on that side. The man fell, mortally wounded, though it would take him a few seconds to die.