Chapter Seven
"Daniel! Over here!"
He had been taking aim at a fat brown rabbit hopping from one white dune to the next. Now Dan turned to look at his curious traveling companion. He and Nicholas had kept moving throughout the night, pausing no more than a few minutes at a time to rest. Now the moon was gone, bedded down behind a horizon of black trees and white snow, and the sun was stretching its pale pink fingers across the land. Nicholas had pulled ahead of him and crouched halfway across the small clearing they walked, one hand brushing the snow. The other was waving, beckoning him forward.
Two dozen long legged strides took Dan to his side. "What is it? You find somethin'?"
"Someone has lain here. Not too long ago. And see – tracks of bare feet." Nicholas pointed at the ground. "But there is also this."
Dan rested one knee on the snow and reached out to touch the depression in the white stuff. " A boot print. 'Bout Mingo's size by the look of it."
"Yes. A tall man. And here – you can see the cut of the heel of a regulation British boot."
Dan touched that too. It went in deep. "Sure enough."
Nicholas sighed as he stood and turned his face to the sky. "I will need shelter soon, Daniel. It is a good thing the bare foot-prints indicate Mingo's path led him into the forest."
"Why would a man choose to walk in the snow without shoes?" Dan asked as he rose to his feet and dusted off his knee. "Seems like a mighty fine way to lose toes."
"Better than losing his mind," the blond murmured almost to himself, and then added, "Call it Cherokee superstition."
"I thought 'Cherokee superstition' was what brought you here."
"Not superstition, Daniel. Legend. Myth. Both of which most often have their origins in truth. Superstition is another thing. Do I toss salt over my shoulder to ward off evil spirits? No. Do I fear black cats? Again, no. Mingo and his healer believe he has been possessed by Henry Pitcairn simply because he donned a dead man's boots. That is utter nonsense." Nicholas flashed that smile. "I think the cold has gotten to him…."
"So you really don't believe Henry Pitcairn has taken Mingo over? In spite of your Bible quotes?"
Nicholas was silent for a moment. Then he favored him with a grim grin. "No. No, I don't. I am afraid I have a tendency to become overly dramatic at times. No, I assure you, Daniel, that Henry Pitcairn's bones are resting in that cave. Experience and superstition both tell us that if a ghost is walking the earth, it is tied to the place where it died."
Dan waited a moment. "I don't put much stock in ghosts."
Nicholas laughed. "That does not surprise me."
"But this Raven Mocker? You think it's real?"
His companion glanced at the sky again and winced. Nicholas signaled him to follow and, as the sun crested above the horizon, the two of them crossed the remaining portion of the clearing to enter the shelter of the trees. Once safe in their embrace, Nicholas turned back to face him.
"You ask about the Raven Mocker. I am not certain," Nicholas paused, "but I think one was there when I entered the Place of 1000 Spirits and found Mingo nearly frozen."
"In the cave?"
"There was a feeling of evil. And hunger. Shadows moving, as if with a life of their own. I believe there was someone – or some thing there, Daniel. It fled when I arrived."
"So you're what the monsters are afraid of?" Dan asked with a crooked grin.
Nicholas stiffened. A frown marred his boyish face. He said nothing but nodded once, and then disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees.
Dan stared after him a moment. He shook his head and, Ticklicker in hand, picked up the pace to follow.
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Mingo moaned and his eyelids fluttered. He drew in a deep breath, and then coughed when the breath brought smoke into his lungs. His opened eyes told him he was in some sort of a structure – it looked to be an abandoned cabin – that he was lying on a cot, and that there was a fire cheerily burning away on the hearthstones. He closed his eyes again, counted to ten, and then reopened them.
The cabin was still there. So was the fire.
He wasn't hallucinating.
At least, he hoped he wasn't. At the moment there was a very attractive brunette angel in a sapphire gown gliding across the cabin floor to come to his side. The elegant fabric of her blue skirts rustled as she sat beside him and reached out to place a cool hand on his hot forehead. The angel gazed at him soberly for several heartbeats, her round red mouth pursed in a perfect pout, and then she sighed.
And – in French – called him an idiot.
"What?" he croaked, licking dry chapped lips. "Who are you?"
"Do you have snow dust in your eyes, Kerr-a-Mingo? Or have I changed so that you do not know me?"
Mingo frowned as he fought to bring the speaker into focus. Was there such a thing as a French angel? he wondered. His father, he knew, would have answered that query with a resounding 'no!'
"Perhaps this will remind you…."
Then the angel did a perplexing thing. She placed her hand on his chest, leaned over, and kissed him!
As her fingers played with the lacings on his borrowed shirt and brushed the black hair beneath it, she brought her painted lips close to his ear. "Stirlingshire Manor. Perhaps ten years ago. The Drawing Room."
"The drawing…room?"
"I believe that is where you ran," the angel answered, unexpectedly coiling her fingers in his chest hair and pulling up sharply, plucking out a few hairs. As he yelped, she pronounced smartly, "After you turned me down!"
Mingo's head was throbbing. His extremities and his frozen feet were on fire. He wasn't sure if someone asked his name if he could tell them – but he knew that petulant self-centered tone.
"Jeanne? Jeanne DuCharme?"
She tossed the hairs aside as she rose to her feet. "Oui."
"How did you…." Mingo glanced around at the cabin. "How did I come to be here?"
"I found you alone, lying face down in the snow. Muttering as if there was someone there to hear. Most particulier."
"But there was someone there! There were people!" he insisted, sitting up. "Dozens of people – men, women, and children. Didn't you see them?"
Jeannette scowled at him as she returned to his side. "You are delirious."
"No, I am not. They followed me from the cave. They want me dead!" He was breathing fast now.
"Nonsense. If they followed you, then where are they?" She spread her hands wide. "Look around! There is no one here but you and me. When I found you, you were alone."
Mingo let out a sigh as he fell back against the pillow propped at the head of the cot. "Alone? Jeanne, I am never alone. Not anymore. He is here," he pointed to his temple. "He is here with me, always, in my head."
"And I thought Nicholawas mad. It is no wonder he sought you out." She sat beside him again and scowled. "You are both…how do you say it? Pareils? The same."
"Nicholas…. Yes, I was with Nicholas."
Her tone was eager. "When? Where?"
He shook his head. "It is cloudy now. Like everything…. There were lodges. And a village?"
"Chota?" she asked putting a name to the place.
"Yes. That is it. Chota." He frowned. "Why was I there?"
Jeannette rolled her deep blue eyes. "I was hoping you could tell me! Knowing Nichola, this all has something to do with his being 'cured'. Madame Boone told me he came to this bucolic setting looking for you."
"Cured…yes…." Mingo closed his eyes. He remembered a time, not so long ago, when he had awakened to find his old friend Nicholas Knightsford leaning over him as Jeanne was now. It seemed a century ago. "A cure for his condition. A cure for the curse…."
"Curse?" Jeanne spat. "The only 'curse' Nichola bears is his own guilt and shame. If your shaman can cure him of that, I will reward the man handsomely." He felt her lean in toward him and opened his eyes to find her beautiful face once again close to his. "And you know I can."
Mingo didn't hear her. In his mind he had returned to the cave – to the Place of 1000 Spirits – to the moment when Nicholas had arrived. He tried to see his old friend's face, but it was a blur. In fact, Nicholas himself had no longer seemed human. He had become a black shadow – an absence of light.
And then he realized the one who had leaned over him was not Nicholas –
But something else.
In his mind's eye the creature wrapped in shadows reached out toward him now. He felt its bony fingers touch his flesh – fingers cold as the white death waiting without. It laughed and the sound was harsh, like a bird cackling or a crow cawing. As it bent forward he became frozen – not with that cold – but in an icy prelude to death. Then he saw another form standing close behind it. A tall man, with a scrub of a beard, wearing a crimson uniform and a wicked sneer that lifted the corner of one lip.
Henry Pitcairn's clear blue eyes met his.
And they were one.
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Jeannette yelped and jumped to her feet as Mingo cast his covers aside and rose. He had seemed to fall into a trance, and then awakened without warning. Shoving her out of his way he limped to the door and checked it, making certain it was barred. Then he began circling the room, frantically moving from one piece of primitive furniture to another.
"What do you think you are doing?" Jeannette asked as he focused on one of the heavy wooden chairs butted up against a rough-hewn table. Mingo stopped at her voice but did not look at her. Then he lifted the chair high over his head and brought it down on the floor, breaking it into dozens of pieces. "Have you gone mad?" she cried.
"I have to keep it out," Mingo answered as he palmed one of the larger boards.
"It? What are you raving about?" She followed him across the cabin. He had left the remaining bits of the chair behind to cross to a large cupboard. Once there he threw it open and began tossing its contents on the floor. "The man who uses this cabin in the summer months is going to be très angry with you," she warned.
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "All that matters is the Raven Mocker. Don't you
understand? It wants me. I got away, and it wants me. It won't stop until it has me – and it
has employed those damned spirits from Wi-sha-sho to get me!"
Jeannette frowned. He wasn't making sense. "What are you talking about?"
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When Mingo turned and met her eyes, Jeannette sensed immediately that something was terribly wrong. There was something within their black depths that simply was not – him. "Boone understood, I could see it in his eyes, even if the Indian – the animal didn't," he continued. "I had to follow orders. That's what a soldier does." Mingo began to shift through the cupboard's contents again. "Doesn't this man own a mallet?"
"A soldier? Since when were you a soldier?" she asked. "And what did you do?"
"What I had to. Made a bargain with the Devil – Aha!" Mingo emerged from the depths of the cupboard with a wooden mallet gripped in his shaking fingers. "Triumph! Victory, dear lady! Now we shall see if good old fashioned muscles and ingenuity can keep the Devil at bay."
Jeannette was scowling now. The patterns of his speech had changed . Even the way he held his body. There was a sort of swaggering arrogance about him that seemed wholly foreign to the man she remembered. She stepped closer to him. "It is said that one who bargains with the Devil takes a chance of being burned – eternally," she told him.
Mingo froze for just a second and then laughed. It was a curious, haunted hollow sound. "I have been damned, dear lady, since the first day I set foot in that cave. From the moment I recruited that hateful creature to aid me in my hour of need. I made certain it was there, among them, when the call to battle came. When my men slaughtered two hundred Shawnee animals, who would know that one among them was not Shawnee? But it didn't die…." His voice trailed off. "It refused to die…."
His arm had dropped. The mallet hung limp in his fingers. Then it fell to the floor. A shudder ran through his lean, muscular body, and then Mingo turned black eyes on her.
"Jeanne," he said, his voice no more than a lost child's whisper, "help me…. I am lost."
And then he crumpled to the floor.
Janette ran to Mingo's side and knelt by him. Placing her hand on his chest, she felt his heart pounding hard as though a fever raged within him. She sat back and frowned, wondering what she should do. The room grew silent as the tomb and into that silence an unexpected sound bled. The sound of someone weeping. Janette turned her head toward the window. The sun was shining. A single beam striped the cabin floor. She dare not venture out until night. A look – even a glance out the window at this time would be tempting destruction.
Still, she had to look.
Rising, she left Mingo on the floor and went to the window. Hugging the shadows inside the cabin, she raised two fingers to the curtain, careful not to let the sun's ray touch them. Then she pushed the curtain aside, cursing prettily as the beams of the dreaded daystar falling through the window's crossbar painted a shadow cross on the fallen man's back.
Outside, circling the cabin, were shadowy figures – men, women and children – all silent, all still.
And all copper-skinned.
Janette gasped and let the curtain go. She turned back to look at Mingo and was startled to find a black shape hovering over him. The cloaked creature cackled and lifted its head – the corrupted eyes within its tattered black hood fastening on her own.
"I know what you are," it said, its voice husky and dry as bone. "Do not try to stop me, or others will know as well."
Jeanne's jaw tightened. She straightened her spine and tossed her black-brown locks. "I am not afraid of you," she snarled. "You should be afraid of me. Now get away from Mingo!"
The shadow, the absence of light, the Cherokee Raven Mocker croaked as it pointed a finger at the fallen man. "This one escaped me, but he could not escape the one who betrayed me. Henry Pitcairn is within him, and both will pay the price." The creature hobbled toward her, its eyes gleaming like sun on wet stone. "I will take this one's life, his remaining years – his soul! And you – creature of the night – even you cannot stop me."
Jeanne shivered as the Raven Mocker drew close and a sense of evil deeper than her own assaulted her. Still, she would not back down. Furious, she struck out with her hand to pull its cloak of shadow away, to reveal the one who perpetrated this hoax and came away with nothing.
Her hand was empty
The Raven Mocker was gone.
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Daniel Boone awoke. It was late afternoon and already the sun had disappeared, leaving only a faint trail of light that painted the snow-covered world a pale purple. They had walked beneath the trees as long as Nicholas could abide the rising sun and then, when it reached its zenith, taken refuge in another of the many caves that dotted Kentucky's hills. He must have fallen asleep without realizing it. Dan stretched and then looked about for his companion.
Nicholas Knightsford was nowhere to be found.
Dan frowned, stretched again, and then rose to his feet. He picked up Ticklicker from the place where he had left her leaning against the wall and then ducked and headed out of the cave. Once outside his frown deepened. There were no footprints. Kneeling, he examined the ground. Since he couldn't frown any deeper, Dan pursed his lips and shook his head. Rising again, he looked up into the air.
Unless the man was able to fly like a bird it didn't make any sense.
Dan shrugged his shoulders and set out at a slow walk toward the surrounding trees. There must be a crust of ice on the snow here that made prints not stick, he told himself – even as his own booted feet left only faint impressions on its surface.
He hadn't walked very far when he heard voices raised in anger. Pausing, Dan got a bearing and then crouched and crawled toward the sound. Ahead of him, through a thicket of iced trees, were two figures. In the pale purple light he recognized Nicholas Knightsford. The other man he didn't know. He was tall, and wore a white wig and a thick military cloak that looked to be of British issue. Frowning again, Dan moved in closer to take a listen.
"…this pointless escapade," the older man said. "Do you really think you will find the answer here to your quest?"
"What I hope to find here is my soul!" Nicholas struck his chest with his hand. "A way back, LaCroix. It has been done before."
"Bollocks, Nicholas. That is blather. Utter nonsense. There is no way back. Not for you. Not ever."
"I will prove you wrong! Leave me be. Give me time. Let me find my friend. Then together he and I will find the answer I seek."
Dan's ears perked up. 'His friend'. Nicholas had to mean Mingo. Dan crawled a little closer and listened intently.
"Ah, yes, dear old Kerr Murray. 'Mingo' now, I understand. What a charming appellation." LaCroix threw his cloak back, revealing the British uniform beneath. "It seems – as usual – Nicholas, that you and I have something in common. I have come to find this same man. What a coincidence!"
"Nothing is a coincidence with you, LaCroix," Nicholas growled. "What is your interest in Mingo?"
"Well, now, I can't have him leading my boy astray, can I?"
"Leave him alone!"
"That is what you should have done, Nicholas. Do not think you can out-think me!" LaCroix snarled like a mountain cat perched to leap. "I know what you did. Bad boy! How dare you interfere in my plans."
"How dare you attempt to use one of my friends to further your own ends," Nicholas snapped back. "It will not happen LaCroix."
"Why? Because you intercepted the letter?"
Nicholas stiffened. Haltingly, he asked, "What…what letter?"
"Don't you know that it is a crime punishable by imprisonment to accost a courier of the Governor-general of the Virginia Territory and to steal what he carries?" LaCroix moved in as if for the kill. "And worse, to come between a father and his good intentions for his son?"
"You are two of a kind!" Nicholas shot back.
"Now. Now. Isn't that what they deem 'the pot calling the kettle black'?" LaCroix laughed.
Dan shifted in his hiding place. There was intrigue within intrigue here. This LaCroix had to be speaking of Lord Dunsmore, Mingo's English father. It seemed he meant Mingo harm and that part of Nicholas' reason for coming to Boonesborough had been to protect him. And what was this about a letter? Cincinnatus had said something was bothering Mingo, something that made him take to drink like he had the last time his father had come around.
What was Lord Dunsmore up to now?
"I will never go back to you!" Nicholas declared. "I will find my cure and laugh when I stand in the sun, free at last."
Faster than Dan could see LaCroix was on the other man and had Nicholas by the throat.
"You will never be free. A boy can never be free of his father!"
"That ain't exactly true," Dan said rising and walking toward the pair. He was looking down Ticklicker's sight at LaCroix. "He can be – if the father is willing to let him become a man. Now, I'd advise you let Nicholas go."
LaCroix looked at him with a mixture of astonishment and amusement. "Oh dear! I am so frightened," he said, cocking one white eyebrow. "And who is your savior, Nicholas? Another friend?"
"Leave him alone, I beg you," Nicholas' voice was choked. "LaCroix, please…."
The white-haired man sneered. "Then, I would advise you to do the same."
"I'm waitin'," Dan warned, pulling back on the trigger.
LaCroix looked at him. "Well, we mustn't have that – " he remarked. Then, without warning, he effortlessly lifted Nicholas from the ground and threw him straight as an arrow toward him.
Before Dan knew it he was on the ground and Ticklicker had fired.
Directly into Nicholas Knightsford's body.
