Unbroken Circle
Chapter Two
"Will that circle be
unbroken, by and by . . .
There's a better home a waitin' . . .”
Shaun
McCairn sat at the back of the church on a bench made from a split-off
tree half with legs. He scuffed his heels on the wood floor and
waited for the last hymn of the Sunday services to come to a close.
He wanted it to be over. Hard to think on things in here.
The people began
to rise, and he hurried out the door and headed for the trees. He
was sure happy he didn’t have to line up and glad-hand the preacher.
He’d wait on the family out under one of the large poplars
in the churchyard.
From his half-hidden position at one of the large trees, he watched the
people file out like a bunch of lazy old caterpillars, but weren’t
any butterflies amongst them, moths more than likely. He snickered.
Here and there people grouped-up in tight clumps to ward off the
cold wind, trade gossip, and swap tales of their miserying and remedies.
Wasn’t his thing. Solitude, off to himself. Pa didn’t
give him much of that so he had to —
Voices. Getting
close. He slid behind the tree so as not to be seen. He could
see three men through a hole in the laurel bushes, but they couldn’t
see him. They drew up nigh and gathered at a thick evergreen, pulled
their coats tightly around themselves. The first day of spring was
just two weeks away but the March wind brought the air to well below freezing.
Sam Quinn looked
up. “Here comes Miles.” He glanced over his shoulder
and spoke in a half-whisper to Timothy Devenshire and Emmitt O'Mara.
“What do you think? Should we get John McCairn's advice on how to
do what we been jawing about?”
“No.”
Emmitt shook his head. “Waste of breath.”
Shaun straighten.
Why would they say something like that? Pa was a reasonable man.
Sometimes.
Timothy sniffed.
“Well, you know Miles is gonna’ want to be the one in charge.”
Sam looked over his shoulder again. “But
you know how he gets all worked up. He still thinks he’s in
Kentucky trapping and fighting Indians.”
“Sometimes,
I think it's his anger that makes us think he's in charge.”
Timothy huddled within his coat and shivered.
“Well,
sure isn't level-headed thinking,” Emmitt said.
“Shssh,
here he comes.”
Miles Dobson
approached the men, hunched from the cold, his hands shoved deep in coat
pockets. “Tell everybody, tonight, near dusk. We gonna meet
by the dead chestnut standing by itself on your place Sam. Then
we’re a going to kill that damn old shaman squattin’ on our
land.”
“That’s
right,” Sam Quinn said, “if we kill that heathen and wipe
that burial ground from the face of the earth, those Indians’ spirits
won’t have anyplace to come back to and the Chattanocks on the way
here will be afraid their own spirits will wander forever when they die.”
“It’s
not Christian talking about killing a man right here in the churchyard.”
Timothy sniffed several times as he spoke. “Besides,
I hear tell those Indian spirits can do awful things to a man. Can’t
we —”
“Timothy,
sometimes I think you’re a damn . . .,” Miles shook his head.
“It's the only thing we can hitch our wagon to right now. Hear me?”
“My
mind's pointing the same direction,” Sam said. “Military's
going to think we can't care for ourselves. Indians will think us cowards.”
“You
got that right.” The words barely escaped between Miles' clenched
teeth.
Shaun made sure he only let one eye poke
out behind the tree. No one was paying any attention to him, and that
was good.
Miles Dobson’s
anger gave his square chin and high cheek bones sharp angles that made
his whole face look stretched-out. And that hooked nose of his,
Shaun thought, could’ve been stolen from a witch. He was much
the same as the others, skin wind-burned, belly too big, in his forties
and already old.
“All
I know is we got to get together,” Sam Quinn said. “Something's
got to be done before the Indians get near.”
“If
the red skin bastards get atop Saddleback Mountain, we're done for,”
Miles said.
Emmitt shook his head. “We’re
sure not going to be able to fight three or four tribes.”
“That’s
right. I hear tell it’s gonna be one of them Gatherings, several
tribes meeting here to help them thieving Chattanock. Hell, I tell
you again, they ain't reclaiming my land. Nope.” Miles
shook his fist and hit his chest. “Not long as my lungs got air.”
Sam Quinn
nodded vigorously. “The military will be there right in the
middle of it. Every one of our families will be there, too . . .
with blood boiling.”
Timothy sniffed
twice. “But don’t we got time? The tribe's —”
“A
thousand miles ain't all that far,” Miles said. “Not
enough to make any of us feel no better. I figure we got less than four
months! Time's gonna slip up on us.”
Emmitt cleared
his throat. “But Miles, how about that new treaty? Doesn't
it say we're obliged to —”
“Don't
say nothing, hear me! It's one of them government treaties that
everybody knows ain't worth a three-legged mule.”
“Reckon
President Jackson's going to let this come about?” Timothy asked.
Miles almost
spit on himself when his wide mouth flew open to speak. “Damn
Andy Jackson! He's the one letting them weasel their way back here.”
He sprayed spittle about the group. “Some damn experiment
folks in Washington City says this is gonna help get Andy reelected, but it’s
just gonna get our homes burnt to the ground. Them Injuns belong
west of the Mississippi where they’ve been putting the rest of the
tribes.”
“That’s
the truth,” Sam said, “and if they come back here, then I’m
for planting every last one of them in that scared burial ground of theirs.”
“I
agree,” Miles said. “It’s better them be the sacred
ones than us.”
