The Key to the Indian

  His father stood up. One leg nearly gave way under him, but he managed to heave the basket up and away. They were still in the longhouse, but much farther from the fire. The running feet must have kicked them halfway to the doorway.

  They stared. Through the doorway they could see the tall, abutting posts of the palisade blazing. They could see the silhouettes of Indians, women as well as men, running, leaping – right through the flames! They saw raised tomahawks and heard their war-cries. Dogs barked. Then there were shots. And all the time the sinister crackle and roar of the fire.

  “What can we do? How can we help?” Omri suddenly shouted.

  “We can’t. We can’t do a single damn thing,” said his father between his teeth.

  They heard sounds behind them, and turned. They saw that not everyone in the group around the fire had run outside. Many of the women had remained behind. With frantic, fearful haste they were gathering up the younger children.

  “They shouldn’t stay here. They have to get out,” said Omri’s father. “They must—”

  A tremendous crash behind them made them turn again. A section of the burning stockade had fallen inward, towards the longhouse, on to its roof. A mass of burning poles fell through the doorway and crashed to the ground in a wild uprush of sparks. A monstrous tidal wave of smoke five times their height rolled towards them and engulfed them, forcing them to turn and run the other way, back toward the central fire, coughing and choking, their arms over their eyes.

  Suddenly Omri felt his father grab him.

  “Wait!” he coughed. “Where’s Tall Bear?”

  “They left him – asleep – in the room…”

  “We must get him!”

  Had his father forgotten they were small? But they ran, as hard as they could with their bruises and strained muscles. Omri knew which was Little Bull’s compartment by now, it was the one with the short logs of elm wood and sweet-smelling pile of grass near it, Twin Stars’ basket-makings. To them it seemed about a hundred metres away. Eventually, they reached it, and dived under the corn-husk curtain.

  The room was relatively smoke-free so far. They could see Tall Bear amid the hides. He’d woken up and was sitting looking about him, a bewildered giant’s child with black hair on end. When he saw them, his face broke into a smile. He went on to all fours and began to crawl eagerly towards them.

  “Come on, Om – run – draw him after us!”

  They dived back under the curtain and burrowed under the sweetgrass. Tall Bear crawled after them, sticking his head out from under the curtain and looking around in the fire-lit darkness. Then he got a lungful of smoke, and did exactly what Omri’s dad had been hoping. He let out a howl that turned into a noisy burst of coughing.

  Beside the fire, a woman’s attention was caught. She saw the baby and ran towards him, scooping him up in her arms and carrying him away. The last they saw of him, he was hanging over her shoulder, reaching out his chubby hands towards them, yelling blue murder.

  The wave of smoke had cleared a little, and wasn’t so thick down near the ground, where they were. Omri could look around him. “Where’s Clan Mother?” he asked suddenly.

  “There she is. She’s still by the fire. They must have forgotten her.”

  “We must do the dream!”

  “What?”

  But Omri couldn’t wait to explain. He was running. His shoulder and neck hurt fearfully but it was as if the pain were somewhere else. It didn’t stop him. He ran as hard as he could, and his father came limping behind him with one stiff knee, gasping “What? What are you doing?” Omri ran on ahead, trusting his dad to follow as best he could.

  It was a long way to the fire, and to the old woman. By the time he got there, Omri was practically exhausted, and his lungs and eyes were protesting bitterly against the smoke. He thought frantically, “Her eyes! She looks half-blind! She probably won’t even see us through all this!”

  But when he came up to her and tugged the skirt near her folded knee, and shouted, and waved his arms, she looked down slowly, as if she had been in a trance, and then sharply bent closer. She saw him! She reached out her hand to catch hold of him. But this wasn’t what he wanted.

  He dodged and ran a little distance away. He turned. Her eyes had followed him. He was on the far side of her now. He remembered how Little Bull had said the little man in the dream behaved. He stood still, out of her reach, and pointed toward the far doorway, the one without the fire, and beckoned strongly with his other arm.

  He heard her give a gasp. And then at once, she started to lever herself to her feet.

  A passing woman noticed her struggles to get up and helped to lift her. Clan Mother clutched her with both hands, shouting at her, pointing to the nearest doorway, through which could be seen nothing but darkness – the stockade fire had not yet crept right round to the other side. The woman nodded and ran off.

  “She’s gone to call the others!” Omri said to his father, who had just stumbled up to him. “They’ll take their kids and go out through the far door!”

  “But how will they get through the stockade? The only gap is at the other end!”

  Omri stood stock still. He hadn’t thought of that. Surely the raiders wouldn’t have wanted the women and children to be trapped in the burning longhouse? That would be too wicked.

  Women were now mustering, keeping their children close. They seemed well-organised; there was no panic. The smoke from the burning at the far end was thickening, and many of the children were coughing, though not many were crying – Omri remembered reading that Indian children were taught not to cry. He looked back. The flaming poles that had fallen had set fire to the dry bark of the end wall. That end of the longhouse was already well alight.

  Suddenly he felt the skin on the right side of his face begin to prickle and quiver. It was remembering, the way parts of the body can, the injury it had got, the last time he’d gone back in time. His face was afraid – afraid of being burnt again. This fear communicated itself to the rest of him and he felt suddenly weak and helpless. Abruptly, he was so overtaken with fear he could hardly speak.

  “Dad! Let’s get out of here – please!”

  “Get to the side of the aisle, or we’ll be kicked again.”

  They ran to the side, stood against an upright pole, and then turned. The small crowd of women and children were starting to move swiftly towards the empty black-dark doorway at the end, away from the blaze.

  But suddenly it wasn’t empty any more.

  Two men – not Indians – appeared in it. One held a flaming torch in one hand and a flintlock pistol in the other. The other cradled a musket.

  The women stopped dead.

  There was a long, horrible moment when nobody moved. There must have been sounds coming from the other end of the longhouse, but it was as if Omri’s ears went dead. The moment caught and held and was full of utterly silent menace. He had time to notice that the men were smiling – grinning at the crowd of women, as if getting ready to greet them.

  Then there was panic. The women, many still clutching children in their arms or dragging them by the hand, turned and fled down the aisle. The central fire partly blocked their escape route, and one woman, running blindly, tripped and fell into the glowing embers. She screamed. Her little boy screamed too, and pulled her by the arm as she struggled to roll clear of the smouldering logs. Then there was a bang that nearly stopped Omri’s heart.

  The woman seemed to lift off the ground, and then fell back, motionless, her head in the embers. Her hair began to burn but she didn’t move. Her little son stood there, frozen, gaping. The whole thing took about a second. Then another shot rang out, a deeper, roaring sound and, after a brief pause for reloading, the flintlock fired again, through the smoke toward the fleeing backs.

  Omri couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He just stood there watching, stunned with horror. He had forgotten his father, Little Bull, Clan Mother. All he could think of was Twin Stars. Was she among the fleeing wo
men? Was she the one he saw leaving the ground as a musket-ball hit her, and then dropping?

  Then he realised something else. At the far end, they couldn’t get out. They were trapped by the blaze. The settlers could just come around the central fire towards them and pick them off, one by one, at their leisure.

  The only thing that was delaying this was the smoke.

  The women, brought up short by the blaze, were doubling back, ducking into the compartments, hiding behind the corn-husk curtains. Omri saw one dodging into Little Bull’s room. Was it Twin Stars? Where was she? Where was Tall Bear? He couldn’t see! He couldn’t see!

  The men had lost sight of their targets. But they knew they had them, that there was no escape. They moved down the aisle quite calmly. The one with the torch touched it to the bottoms of the corn-husks which caught like the dry leaves they were, and the fire streamed up them. Soon the whole building would be ablaze and the women sheltering in those compartments would be…

  A strong, hard hand closed around Omri and lifted him.

  He gasped and struggled but it was useless. He’d had both of the men in his sight – it wasn’t them! Who had picked him up?

  He twisted his head in breathless fear. It was Old Clan Mother! Why hadn’t she run away with the other women? And he saw his father in her other hand. She was walking with them. Walking, not running. Not away from the men, but towards them.

  21

  Clan Mother’s Courage

  The men couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw this old, old woman, half-hidden by smoke, with her long white hair and glittering, squinting eyes, walking slowly, with her arms stretched ahead of her like a blind person, marching into the muzzles of their guns. Blocking the way to their murderous purpose.

  They stopped in their tracks. The grins fell off their bearded faces. Their gun arms slackened uncertainly. Then the one with the pistol raised it and pointed it at her.

  “Keep back, ye crazy old heathen!” he barked. But his voice shook.

  She kept coming, and the other man shrank and backed away.

  And suddenly she emerged from the wreathing smoke into the circle of bright light from the flaming torch. Now they could see clearly what was in the hands she was holding out in front of her.

  Omri, half-paralysed with terror though he was, realised what she was doing.

  The Indians might believe in and accept little people. But not these men. Clan Mother had seen enough of white men to know that.

  In a split-second memory, Omri recalled Mr Johnson, his old headmaster, who had once seen Omri’s own little people and had thought he had lost his mind. He remembered Patrick’s story about the saloon bar in old Texas – the drunks who had seen him, a tiny human, and run away in terror.

  But one of them had shot at him first. Now Omri – and his dad – were in the firing line.

  He never knew afterwards if it was abject terror or cleverness that made him begin to shout and scream, imitating the Indians’ war cries. Whether his wild gestures were struggles to escape, or what the men perceived – threats and defiance from some tiny supernatural being.

  Omri was almost level with the men’s faces – he saw them freeze into masks of terror. As the old woman kept relentlessly shuffling closer, they backed, and backed… The one who had not spoken suddenly let out an inarticulate shout. His musket dropped from his nerveless hands, and he turned, and fled into the night.

  The other one was left alone. He tensed, crouched, caught between two impulses. He looked wild, terrified, like a cornered animal. His pistol, recently re-loaded, was still aimed. His hand was shaking wildly, but at this range he couldn’t miss.

  The old woman thrust her hands even farther forward and shook them almost into the settler’s face. Omri could smell the mustiness of his beard, whisky on his breath, the sour sweat of fear coming off him. Omri’s throat seized up. He couldn’t force out another sound. In one more second he would be looking straight into the barrel of that enormous death-dealing weapon.

  But Old Clan Mother had a last tactic up her sleeve.

  She dropped the arm that held Omri. The gun, pointed at her face, was level. It steadied. And then that withered arm made one last, heroic, wholly unlooked-for effort. It jerked straight up, and Omri felt the barrel of the pistol strike his shoulder sharp and hard. The gun, as it was struck, fired, nearly deafening him. Sparks of burning powder flashed past his face, but the bullet went high, into the roof.

  The man’s nerve broke, and he ran, dropping his pistol. They’ve gone, we’re safe! flashed through Omri’s fear-drenched brain. But the man bent and scooped up the musket. As he was about to disappear through the doorway, he paused for one moment

  “Go back to hell, ye red devil!” he yelled hoarsely and, turning, fired one last shot.

  The old woman stiffened. Her grasp on Omri loosened. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around one of her gnarled fingers. Then he was arcing through the air as she crashed backwards to the ground.

  What happened in the next few minutes was all chaos and confusion to Omri. The women and children came crowding round, and it was like being trapped in a forest of living trees. There were wails and cries of grief. The old woman, who was now a huge motionless mountain in whose flickering shadow Omri and his father crouched, was lifted and carried away.

  They should have stayed in the open, where they could be seen and perhaps rescued, but their instincts were too strong. Like exposed mice they fled from the trampling moccasins and the smoke and noise and danger into the nearest compartment. Scrambling over a heap of furs and other objects, they mounted the sleeping platform, still smelling sweetly and innocently of its sage mattress.

  They only spoke a few brief, panting words to each other.

  “That wasn’t Twin Stars, before – the one who—?”

  “No.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Out with the men. Don’t talk. Help me make a hole in one of these slabs of bark.”

  His dad stared around the football field of a bed, and saw something glint. It was a knife, almost as big as himself. Omri watched as he ran to it, stumbling and tripping over the huge folds of hide, picked it up, dragged it back, and began struggling to pierce one of the bark shingles in the outer wall. In the end he got Omri to help him and they used it like a battering-ram. Between them they pierced and twisted a hole in the bark, big enough to enable them to squeeze through and climb down the three metres or so to the ground. Omri would have fallen if his father had not been below to catch him.

  “Come on, we can’t stay here. We’ve got to get away from the longhouse.”

  They ran through the flickering darkness, but after about two hundred metres, they were brought up short by a huge barrier. It was the stockade.

  “The fire hasn’t got to this part yet! We’ve got to get through!”

  They examined it as well as they could in the dark. It had been all too well constructed, the stripped tree trunks so close together that a beetle couldn’t have squeezed between them, and above them the sharpened tops were invisible – twice as high as the longhouse roof, and now lost in smoke and darkness. It stretched interminably away on either side.

  Which way to run? Neither of them had the least idea, and both were disoriented by fear and exhaustion. They had both been hurt, and their injuries, though not serious themselves, had begun to stiffen and give real pain. The numbness where Omri’s shoulder had struck the pistol barrel now began to feel red-hot, and he saw his dad rubbing his knee and grimacing.

  “Dad – couldn’t we just – sit here and wait – wait for Patrick? I don’t think I can run any more.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do… But if the longhouse collapses on us…”

  They sank down, breathing heavily, at the foot of one of the poles. They could feel the heat, and hear the sound of burning, getting closer.

  “How do you think those awful men got in?”

  “They must have been in already, before the fire was
started.”

  “I suppose Little Bull’s forgotten about us,” Omri said.

  “I wouldn’t blame him. I just hope he’s all right. Do you think the Indians managed to drive the raiders off? I heard shots – I mean from outside.”

  “That must have been the raiders. Little Bull said the Indians had no more bullets.”

  “They had their bows and arrows. I hope they got those swine! They purposely set out to trap the women inside the stockade.”

  After a few moments, Omri sat up straight. “Dad!”

  “What?”

  “They were! They are – they’re trapped! The women I mean. The opening to the stockade was the part that was burning! I think the people who ran out first, jumped through when it was just starting, but the rest of the women and kids must still be caught inside the stockade, the same as us!”

  “Where?”

  “They must be at this end, near the other door!”

  Suddenly, through the roaring noise of the fire, came another sound.

  Thwock-thwock-thwock.

  “What’s that?”

  “I know! Quick – run towards it!”

  They ran to their right. And now Omri could identify the sound, too, – the most welcome sound possible, at that dire moment.

  The thudding of axes against wood.

  “It’s them! It’s the men outside the stockade! They’re using their trade axes to chop a hole to let everyone out!”

  They ran, keeping close to the poles, around a bend near the corner of the longhouse. There, sure enough, they saw the crowd of women and children, huddled together. The sound of the chopping became frenzied – there didn’t seem to be any time between blows. They could see which poles were being attacked because they quivered and shook. And very soon the first of them swayed and screeched and fell outward, leaving a narrow, tree-trunk-shaped oblong through which they could see the night and a section of a man’s figure, wielding a large axe with a metal blade.