"The Ride" by Robert Morgan

Robert Morgan is the author of fifteen books of poetry, most recently Terroir and Dark Energy. He has also published nine volumes of fiction, including Gap Creek, a New York Times bestseller. A sequel to Gap Creek, The Road From Gap Creek, was published in 2013. A new novel, Chasing the North Star, was published in 2015. In addition he is the author of three nonfiction books, Good Measure: Essays, Interviews, and Notes on Poetry; Boone: A Biography; and Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion, 2011. He has been awarded the James G. Hanes Poetry Prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013 he received the History Award Medal from the DAR. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Arts Council, he has served as visiting writer at Davidson College, Furman, Duke, Appalachian State, and East Carolina universities. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010. Born in Hendersonville, North Carolina, he has taught since 1971 at Cornell University, where he is Kappa Alpha Professor of English. At Cornell he has taught courses in American literature, modern poetry, autobiography, as well as poetry and fiction writing.

The Ride

 It was when he was a prisoner of the Creek nation in Alabama, or in what would become Alabama, that John came closest to death. After the hurricane he wandered over the region, just to see what was there, and he grew even taller and stronger. He was proud of his strength, but that was when he learned strength is not enough. He had the brawn of an Achilles, but that was not enough.

It was Turkey Feather, a chief of the Muskogees, who captured him. John was tall and strong and had become a horse trader. Later he would be a peddler in the hills with a pack on his back. But first he wanted to be a bold backwoodsman, trader in horse flesh, for that seemed the most exciting thing, and the most profitable. He built up a small herd and sold mounts and teams to farmers and trappers, but every few nights Creeks would steal a mount. The herd got smaller and smaller, and soon all the horses were gone.

John was pretty sure where the village of Turkey Feather was, and he swam across the Tallapoosa River in the dark to reclaim at least a few ponies and drive them back across the river. It was the only way to recover his confidence and herd. In 1811 there was no law in the territory. And in the full pride of manhood he decided to be his own law.

It was Muskogee dogs that gave John away. Dogs were never his friends in those days of wandering and filibustering. And Indian dogs didn’t seem to ever sleep. Quiet as a spider, he crawled among the grazing horses and coffled a few to lead back to the river. And then the dogs started barking and bellowing like all of bedlam. John could have faded back into the woods to safety, but then the whole trip would be wasted and he would still be ruined. All his money had been invested in horses. John’s stubbornness was his downfall, for as he yanked the lead rope to make the animals walk faster suddenly there were Indians all around him.

“Steal horses, ha?” Turkey Feather said and laughed like he’d told a joke.

“Ain’t took nothing but what’s mine by right,” John said. He’d learned to talk like other traders and peddlers by then.

That’s when John was hit on the side of the head with a club. He was never able to sweet talk Indians the way some traders could. Maybe it was because of his size. He towered over Indians and most other people and let them know he looked down on them. That was his young foolishness.

John understood well enough what Muskogees did to prisoners. Everybody back then did. First, they made them run the Gauntlet, while every man, woman, and child in the village lined up on either side of the path armed with a tomahawk or club or rock and hit them hard as the prisoner dashed between the lines. If you didn’t high-tail it fast enough they could kill you. If you made it to the post at the far end you might be spared, or still tortured, depending on the mood of the village. The Creeks were known as master torturers, keeping people alive for days to torment them.

As John was dragged to the village with hands bound he was hit on the back several times. When they approached the town, women and children ran out shouting and mocking. They’d been sleeping, until the dogs woke them, and now they were all wide-awake, holding sticks, and axes, spears, and hammers. Because John was so tall he was the perfect target. Big fires had been built to light the woods.

Everybody understood the rules of surviving the Gauntlet run. First you had to lunge quick, holding out elbows for protection, dodging blows by zigzagging this way and that, stepping aside, throwing attackers off balance. And if you didn’t run they’d club you to death until your brains spilled out. As he looked at the lines ahead John noticed some of the women held knives, and one older woman waved a bayonet fitted with a wooden handle.

It was the old woman glaring at him that made John pause at the start of the Gauntlet. They all screamed and hollered, little boys and girls, old men and women, shaking clubs and hammers, clamoring for blood. But it was the snaggle-toothed woman with her look of fury that chilled him. John saw that because of his size he was indeed at a disadvantage. A shorter man could sprint through, protecting his head with elbows. But John was so tall there was a lot of him to pummel. John, you’re in a pickle for sure, he muttered. And he understood that even if he made it through the Gauntlet, they might still torture him for days before burning him at the stake, as the whole village watched and cheered.

Turkey Feather frowned as John paused at the opening of the Gauntlet, and with a grunt of disgust he gave John a shove. With hands bound John couldn’t raise arms to protect his face. They beat him from both sides with tomahawks and clubs, and knives slashed at him as he plunged forward. When an Indian stepped forward John shoved the blocker backwards and tried to zigzag, but as he bent over his head was easier to reach. As it was, he was hit on the face and sides of his head, cut and bruised in a hundred places.

Don’t stop, don’t stop, you big fool, he growled.

John couldn’t take eyes off the old woman with the missing teeth at the end of the line. She brandished the bayonet like she meant to run it through his heart. Somebody hit him on the back of the knee and made him lurch. He lunged into people on the left and knocked several down, and almost fell, but found his feet again.

The old woman screamed and shook the bayonet, like she meant to thrust it into his guts. John feigned he was going to swing around her, but at the last instant lowered his head like a rutting bull and smashed into her face. She tumbled backwards and he reached the end of the line out of breath. The Indians roared with laughter and John thought they must be ridiculing him. Then he found they were pointing at the old woman sprawled on the ground. She’d lost hold of the bayonet when she fell and there was blood on her mouth, like he’d knocked out more of her teeth. John gasped for breath, with cuts and bruises all over, while the Muskogees guffawed and pointed at the old woman like they’d forgotten about him.

One of the braves stepped up behind John and knocked him down, and two others cut his hands loose and tied him to stakes in the ground, flat on his back, near a fire. They pulled off his boots and flung them away. It was a well-known fact that Creeks liked to stab prisoners with burning sticks, and pour hot coals on their heads after they’d been scalped. The coals would fry right through the skull. The women liked to pull out fingernails and toenails and cut off private parts. If a prisoner passed out they’d splash water on his face till he woke. One of the dogs sneaked around and bit John’s foot, and another licked his face. And children threw dust in his eyes which he couldn’t blink away.

They tossed more wood on the fires to light up the village of log houses. John was pretty sure what was coming. John, old boy, your goose will be a cinder this time. The Indians talked among themselves, arguing and gesturing, and John could tell it was about him. Some wanted to burn him right then, and some wanted to scalp him, and punch his eyes out, and then burn him. But Turkey Feather had other ideas as it turned out. He shook his painted face and pointed to John’s big shoulders. Instead of torturing and killing all prisoners, Muskogees sometimes adopted them to replace men lost in battle or to disease. It was a way of replenishing their population. Turkey Feather pointed to John and other braves shook their heads and argued.

While they quarreled in the firelight, the old woman he’d knocked down crawled over to John. She wiped blood away from her mouth and pointed to John’s face and giggled. She patted her mouth and said the word that he knew meant a woman’s private parts. Then she stood and yanked up her skirt and sat astride him. She rocked back and forth on John’s mouth and roared with humor, and those around her laughed too. She called him nothing but a damned squaw and pressed her flesh right against his mouth.

John thought he was going to smother. He was a goner anyway, and what did he have to lose, so he turned his face and bit her thigh hard as he could. She screeched like a wildcat and wrenched herself off him. There was a storm of laughter all around as the crowd made fun of her again. She rubbed her flesh where it hurt. John was tied down and there was nothing else he could have done, under the circumstances.

The old woman grabbed the bayonet and it appeared she meant to slash John’s throat. But Turkey Feather snarled and signed for her to cut John loose from the stakes. She held back and a brave jerked the blade out of her hands and sliced the cords holding John. He figured they meant to scalp and burn him. Turkey Feather didn’t show any signs of adopting John.

When John rose to his feet the chief looked him in the eye and said again, “Steal horses, ha!”

“Them are my horses,” John said.

“Give you a horse,” Turkey Feather snorted. There was more laughter among the braves, but women and children didn’t laugh. It was only later that John understood why the women and children weren’t amused: they had planned to burn him.

One of the horses John had tried to take back was led into the firelight, the smallest of the ponies, a dapple gray. As one brave held the horse Turkey Feather told John to get on facing backwards. He wondered what their game could be. Riding backwards was something done to criminals and condemned men, and dunces. They lifted him onto the horse, and soon as he was astride they bound his feet with buffalo tugs under the horse’s belly, then bound his hands behind his back to a rope tied to the horse’s neck, so he didn’t have anything to hold to.

It was a strange feeling to be turned backwards on a horse, looking over the rump. John had no way to steady himself, and he didn’t know where they meant to take him. At least they hadn’t tied him to a stake over a bonfire, yet. One of the braves brought forward what appeared to be a rag tied to a piece of fur. But as he came closer John saw it was a polecat hide, the skin of a skunk, with a white band down the middle. It had the smell of a skunk, and they placed it over his eyes and tied it behind his head. Now he was blinded and near stifled with the stink of a polecat in his nose.

The Indians started laughing again. He wondered if they meant to shoot him with arrows and spears as he rode the horse backwards. He couldn’t see to dodge anything. Somebody hit the horse and hollered, and the little mount jerked forward and John nearly fell off over the rear, except the rope on his hands caught him. But he bit his tongue when his head snapped forward, and tasted blood. The horse must have circled the clearing, for he heard people shout as they flung rocks and hit the horse with sticks and hickories to make it go faster

As the horse trotted among trees and cabins and campfires John was flung to the left and then to the right. It seemed certain he would fall off, and there was no way he could keep his balance, for he couldn’t see, and limbs hit him on back and head. The air seemed to wash one way and then the other. He thought he was falling, but was yanked back again. They must have prodded the horse, for it bucked and kicked out, trying to shake John off. The pony also tried to knock its burden off by slamming against trees. It was only a matter of time before a limb would bash John’s head off.

A smaller limb slashed into the side of John’s head under the skunk skin and tore away the blindfold, and he could see what was happening. So, this is the way you die, he thought. He’d guessed he’d be killed by a bear, or maybe a panther, or shot in war, or succumb to pox. But there seemed no way he could survive under the low-hanging limbs. His brains would be knocked out for sure.

John didn’t know what happened after that, but suddenly the horse stopped circling and bolted into the woods, and the hollering and laughter faded. Instead there was the swish of limbs and leaves whipping him. He could see the campfires in the distance, but the little horse galloped on and on. And the next thing John noticed was a silver moon over dark trees, as the horse galloped this way and that. It seemed the moon shot by him two or three times, going both backwards and forwards, as the pony dodged around limbs that hit John on the back of his head. He leaned over so far it seemed he was falling, but the rope on the horse’s neck held him. He gripped the horse’s flanks with his knees as they galloped deeper into the dark woods.

Then out of the night John heard voices. He turned far as he could to see what they were coming to. What he spotted first were a number of fires in the woods, and the horse was running straight towards the lights. He wondered if something had set the woods afire. Would the horse dash right through the blaze? But there was a smell of something cooking, a stink of grease. He saw men in ragged buckskin running around among fires and shouting. Bearskins hung from limbs, and other skins were stretched on pegs in the ground.

Wash-pots hung over the fires, and smoke and steam rose from the pots with a sickening stench of ashes and burned fat. A man in clothes so ragged he looked half naked pointed a rifle at John. He must have thought John was an Indian coming out of the dark to attack. One who had been squatting to empty his bowels, jumped up with his pants around his ankles and looked stunned as John galloped by. Another man stirring a pot flung a dipper of smoking grease at the horse.

It was a bear camp where they killed bears and rendered the fat down to oil. The place stank of smoke and rancid meat and guts thrown in the woods. The man with the rifle shot at John and the bullet stung the air like a mosquito buzz. If John hadn’t been bouncing around so much the bullet might have found him. The horse knocked over a tent stob and the tent collapsed and a man ran out and made ugly signs with his fist.

As John rocked from side to side they passed out of the camp back into the dark. He’d been raked by limbs so many times he was sore all over. The cords binding his feet had cut into his flesh and he could feel his ankles bleeding. And he was sick at his stomach from being slammed around so much. He threw up over the horse’s rear end, and felt a little better.

Bushes whizzed by and spider webs caught on his ears. If there had been a black widow spider in his hair he couldn’t have knocked it away. And then he smelled water, punk water, and the horse began splashing through puddles. It must have been a little swamp in the woods, for John thought he noticed the glow of foxfire. Limbs whipped his shoulders and neck like he was being flogged. If the horse had hit quicksand or stepped into a sinkhole he would have sunk into the mire and drowned in mud.

Your fate is finally catching up with you, all the way across South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, across the Tallapoosa River. Your fate has found you out. The wages of sin is death, so it says in Scripture, and it looked as if John was going to die for sure. He could hear a preacher quoting those words to him. There were tears of grief and shame in his eyes, but that didn’t help either.

It must not have been a wide swamp, for soon the horse’s feet clopped on firm ground. And after a while John could see the river. They came to a bluff over the water, a cliff above the Tallapoosa. The horse kept running along the rim. If it stumbled they’d both go tumbling ass over noggin down the cliff. He must have had the head-swim, for as he swung from side to side the river flew by him like a streak of lightning, then whirled past again. He expected any second to be plunging from the bluff onto rocks below.

Just then the pony turned and galloped away from the river. They passed a canebrake where stalks swished in wind. John saw something jump out of the cane and follow. It was a big cat, too big to be a bobcat. It was a panther. He reckoned it smelled the blood on his ankles and the scratches and cuts on his back. Fresh blood will always draw a panther.

The horse saw the cat or smelled it, for it ran harder. John tried to kick like he had spurs to make it go even faster. The panther trailed along, in no hurry because it could pounce any time it chose to. If it leapt on the horse it would kill John first. A panther can slash with claws and bite into your neck and kill you in two seconds. It could eat John’s face away just to lick the blood.

With hands behind his back John couldn’t even try to defend himself. He couldn’t throw anything at the big cat. With one leap it could rip him apart and eat his liver. John tried to think what he might do to scare the cat. It was said that once a panther tastes human flesh nothing else will satisfy it. All John could do was spit toward the long-tailed devil with eyes that glowed in the moonlight. He cussed the cat like it was Satan himself.

 The cat began to lope as it got closer, and John saw it was about to leap with its claws and teeth bared. This is how you die, he thought, with a panther’s fangs in your throat. The cat was only a few feet behind the horse’s tail. John thought he could smell it, or maybe it was the horse’s sweat he smelled. They’d entered a kind of open place, a meadow with clusters of trees and low bushes here and there, but mostly tall grass or weeds. And then he heard a snort and one of the bushes moved. In the moonlight John spied a great hairy head with a beard and understood they’d surprised a herd of buffalos browsing on cane and grass. The buffalos stirred and looked at the running horse. Their eyes glistened and their backs gleamed wet with dew.

If the buffalos spooked and charged they could trample and crush both John and the horse. And if the buffalos didn’t kill them then the panther would. John knew he should be praying. He tried to think of a prayer he’d heard years before. But the only words that came to him were “The Lord is my shepherd.” It was a perfect time to pray, if he could have summoned the right words.

“The Lord is my shepherd!” he shouted, but couldn’t recall what came next. And then he thought maybe if he just wanted to pray bad enough that would be enough. For surely God, if He understood everything, would understand John meant to pray. After all, it was said it’s the thought that counts. But John found no words to say what he felt.

To John’s surprise the panther turned aside. That seemed too good to believe. But he guessed the buffalos presented easier and sweeter prey than the sweaty horse or himself. Young nursing buffalo calves and old buffalos were easy to bring down. And it was well-known that buffalo hump was the sweetest meat there is, except for maybe elk’s liver. Whatever caused the cat to turn away John was relieved.

The horse kept running through buffalos scattered over the meadow and soon entered woods again. John thought the moon had grown brighter, except the moon was now low in the west. Then he noticed light in the east and understood it was near dawn. Soon there would be daylight, but the horse showed no sign of slowing down. He thought: soon this horse must wear itself out. Surely it couldn’t run forever. Neither the horse nor him could last much longer. At some point the horse would stumble and fall, and he’d either be crushed, or find a way to jump free. By then he’d be too weak to cross the river to safety.

They entered woods again, and the horse kept loping along. John closed his eyes, but that made him dizzier. Trees slipped by and disappeared behind him. He was afraid he’d be sick again. He heard people shouting, loud voices and laughter. Straining to turn around he spotted Indians rushing out of the trees, maybe Choctaws or Chickasaws, he thought, or another clan of Muskogees. He hoped they would stop the horse and get him off. They would want the horse for themselves.

Then he recognized the snaggle-toothed old woman who had sat on his face. It was Turkey Feather’s village. The horse had circled around and come back to where they started. People ran out of cabins and children dashed along beside him pointing and laughing. John was the best amusement they had, bloody and dizzy, clothes in rags. The whole village watched him pass and roared and pointed. Then he saw Turkey Feather himself step out of a cabin and stare at him.

One of the braves made like he was going to grab the horse, but Turkey Feather shouted to let it go. Women with babies on their backs laughed at John, and women stirring pots laughed at him. They’d seen him off on a ride to the death, and here he was, raised from the grave, like a cat with many lives. He must have powerful medicine.

Children threw rocks and sticks, and a boy hurled a tomahawk that struck John on the shoulder. Sticks and rocks and pieces of horse dung scared the pony and made it go faster. It turned aside around a cabin and headed for deep woods. A brave aimed an arrow at John, but Turkey Feather waved him to put down the weapon. As John watched the village fade into the woods behind, he understood his troubles were far from over.

The little horse plunged into a kind of thicket of briars and vines, saw-briars, and grape vines big as hangman’s ropes dropped from trees. Briars raked John’s legs and arms with hundreds of little teeth and cat claws. He was afraid one of the low-hanging vines would catch his neck and strangle him. He bent low, but briars rasped his hair and ears and cheeks. Better to get scratched than hanged by a grape vine.

John couldn’t tell any more what direction they were tending. It seemed the pony was pointed northeast out of the village, but he couldn’t be sure. When he looked for light in the east he couldn’t find any. Was the sun blotted out by the thicket? Or had the sky grown cloudy? He’d been trying so hard not to fall off and be trampled by the horse’s feet, and dragged behind by the cords, he’d not noticed a change in weather. The horse had been running for hours. When they finally came out of the thicket he glanced up, but couldn’t see the sun beyond the trees.

The little horse was soaked with a lather of sweat. It panted but kept running. John thought it was spooked by him, and was lunging to get away from him. John had been screaming and calling, and that scared the pony even more. It had been scared by the panther also, and the laughing and pointing in the village. The horse and John were bound together, and there was nothing either could do about it.

It sounded like somebody fired a rifle beside his ear. John twisted to see where the shot had come from, but there was nobody in the woods as far as he could see. And then he noted black clouds boiling above the trees, like the sky was full of smoke and soot from hell itself. And lightning licked out of the clouds like a snake tongue. He’d been astraddle the horse so long he was addled and numb and hadn’t noticed the weather going from moonlight to sunrise and daylight and then to a summer storm. A clap came again and shook the ground, and lightning cracked the sky wide open so close he could hear the snap and sting of the bolt.

An oak tree was hit and burst into flame as its roots exploded out of the ground steaming with heat. The horse turned away from the burning tree and ran faster to get away from the storm. Remember the Burning Bush in the Bible? But this was a whole tree, maybe a hundred feet tall, blazing. The horse didn’t wait to see if the fiery tree would say anything.

About the time they got away from the burning oak rain began, big drops like silver dollars that felt soothing on his sores and bruises and sweat. It was like he could hear a thousand little feet tramping on the trees and ground, an army of raindrops marching around him. It was as if he was hit on the back and shoulders with rocks, handfuls of gravel. John saw white balls bouncing off the trees and ground and rolling like dice. It was a hail storm, hitting him on the back and the top of his head. He knew he could be killed by hail balls if they were big enough. But these white stones were cherry size. He leaned over again to hide his face.

The bouncing hail seemed to confuse the horse, for it veered to the left and then to the right. It didn’t know what was attacking, and John couldn’t calm it, being turned backwards that way. Heaven was throwing rocks at them. If the horse had stopped under a tree they might have had some protection, if lightning didn’t strike the tree. But the little pony was too scared to think like that, even if a horse could think. They were at the mercy of the storm and the ground was getting white, like it was covered with a lot of little eggs. Thank God they were not balls the size of goose eggs or swan eggs.

The hail slackened, and the sky thundered again like cannons going off. That’s when hard rain hit, like barrels of water dumped on every foot of ground. Rain washed over John’s back as if he was under a waterfall, or on the bottom of a river. He wondered how the sky could hold so much water, but it just kept coming down. When you’re out in a storm and naked to the elements, there’s a kind of thrill to it. Lightning claws the air, and you’re in the middle of rain and thunder, and drops hit you in a hundred places. You’re thrilled because you’re at the center of it all, facing the worst, and still alive.

The horse kept going this way and that in pounding rain, and John saw a ball of lightning skip from tree to tree and come bowling over the ground, a ball the size of a barrel, and if it had hit them they would have been burned up. That was the first time John ever saw ball lightning, and he hoped it would be the last, for the ball smashed into a sassafras tree and the tree exploded in white fire.

About that time he spotted what appeared to be steam and smoke among the trees. It was the bear hunters’ pots fuming, though rain had put out the fires under them. Hot oil

hissed as drops fell into it. John noticed the hunters crouched under tents and hunched beneath buffalo robes and bear skins watching him. One of the hunters pointed a rifle at him, but they were too busy keeping out of rain to worry much about John. They’d been caught by the storm and would have trouble finding dry wood to start their fires again.

The little horse kept loping like it didn’t know what else to do. Soon the bear camp was out of sight, and there was nothing but rain on John’s back and face. He saw the river far in the distance and hoped the horse would stay away from the cliff edge. Blinded by rain and lighting, and worn out from running, it might stumble over the bluff.

When John looked again he couldn’t see the river at all. They’d reached the meadow where the buffalos had grazed. The horse had followed the same circuit all the way around. The buffalos were gone, but John spotted the carcass of a young calf, ripped open and bloody, and guessed that was the work of the panther. The cat had made a kill and gorged all it could and left the rest for later, and for buzzards. The body lay in a puddle colored with blood.

They’d not gone much beyond the dead buffalo calf when the pony slowed to a trot. The trot jarred John’s bones worse than galloping had. He wondered if the critter was finally worn out, or if it had seen something ahead that scared it. He wrenched around, but couldn’t see anything. The horse stopped dead still and John sat over its steaming rump as rain droned like a million locusts.

John tried to think of some way to get loose and slide off the sweaty back, but just then the horse spread its feet wide, bracing itself. A rumble came through the ground like an ocean of rocks and dirt knocked together. It was a sound he couldn’t describe, for he’d never heard a noise like it. The roar appeared to come from deep in ground and from the far edge of the world at the same time. The horse kept its legs spread, and then it felt like they got pitched ten feet forward, and twenty feet backward. The ground rose and fell like waves of the ocean. They lifted and dropped, as if a giant hand grabbed them and threw them around. Everything washed one way and then another. The horse whinnied, so scared it raised its tail and dropped muffins of dung in a puddle. John was the worst scared he’d ever been, for it seemed the end of time had come. The earth was tearing itself apart right under them, and big cracks opened in soil. Was it the end of the world preachers had warned about.

In the distance John saw trees falling as they wrenched and whipped back and forth and broke off from stumps. The washing of the ground snapped all trees. The dirt under him had turned to soup and sloshed up and down and all around. John boy, you have met Doomsday for sure. The horse whinnied and raised its tail again and dropped more apples.

Only then did it come to John that this was an earthquake shaking up the land and addling his brain worse than the running had. All his life he’d heard about earthquakes, like the great earthquake of Lisbon, and here he was in the middle of one. Puddles around him drained into cracks opened in ground. It seemed the earth was going to swallow the pony, and him. The sky had hit them with hail and lightning and cloudburst, and now the earth was going to gulp them into its guts.

Quick as the shaking had started it slowed and quit. The horse sensed it before John did, and began walking, then broke into a jogging trot. The pony was too tired to gallop any more. It trotted in the direction it had gone before, repeating a circle, the way the moon does, and earth goes around the sun.

As they entered woods the rain slacked, and broken-down trees dripped and steamed. The horse had to find a way through fallen timbers. John saw they were getting close to the Indian village again. The old squaw would still want to stab and torture him and burn him at the stake, now that he was weak and humbled by the awful ride.

The little horse slowed to a shamble, like it had finally given out. John expected to hear shouting and laughter, and kids running out to tease and jeer at him. But the woods were quiet, except for dripping trees. When they reached the cabins he saw some had been crushed by falling trees, and there was nobody around. The fires had gone out and the village was deserted. Turkey Feather and his people had packed up and marched away, maybe to a hunting camp, or salt boiling camp, or to another village. There was nothing but knocked-down trees, and ashes where fires had been.

The horse stopped and trembled, and settled to its haunches. John tried to spread his feet to keep them from being caught under the horse’s belly. But rain must have stretched the buffalo hide strings some, and his feet broke free; he jumped off and rolled on wet ground. The horse panted like it was about to die, but it was just dead-tired.

John’s hands were still tied to the horse’s neck, and the buffalo cord had stretched, but only a little. He had to gnaw it through with his teeth. Tearing himself loose he stumbled to his feet and found he was still dizzy. John grabbed onto a tree to steady himself until his head stopped spinning. Then he had to decide which was the direction to the river. He’d been turned around so many times he couldn’t think right.

John was barefoot and would have to pick his way among the blow-downs and briars and rocks. The knocked-down trees were called a hurricane, though caused by an earthquake, not high wind. He’d learned his lesson, for he’d seen that boldness and strength alone aren’t nearly enough. A buffalo has strength, a young man has boldness. If he had the strength of Samson it wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to use his head, if he meant to keep it on his shoulders.