Pirate

We absorbed a flurry of arrows as we poled the boats past the far bank, but the moss held and, although we could feel the arrows strike, they did not reach our skin. Soon, the only indication of our passing was the barely audible sound of the poles as they occasionally scraped against the wooden hulls. Our camouflage was so convincing that as twilight turned to night I had to struggle to see the canoe in front of ours. I watched behind us and scanned both banks of the river for any activity, but there was no movement or sound. Although capable of stealth, the Indians had no need for it now—they had the woman. The moon was a quarter up the sky when we finally decided to stop and pulled our cutlasses and guns out. We were all aware of each other and our surroundings as the bottoms of the burnished cypress boats scraped against the gravelly bottom.

We hopped out and gathered in a small group, glad to remove the moss we had used to protect and conceal us. If there were Indians here, I figured there was no harm in it—we would be dead already. I took my covering and placed it back in the boat while watching several others do the same.

“Why are we stopping so close to the bastards?” Red asked.

“Yea. There’s no reason. What if they come after the treasure?” another commented.

“You can do what you want. I’m not leaving here without Rory.” I had figured this was going to happen and had no other answer.

“Boy’s got a case of it, I guess. What about you, Rhames? You’re awfully quiet over there,” Red said.

Rhames was still covered in moss and only the occasional flash of moonlight reflecting off the metal rifle barrel revealed his position. I made a note to tarnish the steel of our weapons. We watched him, wondering if we were indeed safe or should replace the moss we had taken off when he came toward us.

“Someone’s been here,” he said, as he took the moss from his head and sat on the bow of one of the canoes.

He looked sick, and I remembered the pained look on his face before I took the watch and discovered the trader. We had been moving nonstop since then, and I had failed to check on him.

“Looks like about ten men camped here,” Red said. “There’s a firepit, cold now, but the embers are still there, so they were here after the rain.”

I thought back to the rain and realized it was only a handful of days ago. “Why would a group camp here when the main village is only an hour or so away?”

“Now you’re thinking,” Rhames said, but stopped trying to mask the pain on his face.

I started running scenarios in my mind. Had the party been made up of Indians from the village close by, they either would not have camped here or would have built the fire on the open beach. There were rumors that the Army was rounding up the Indians in the north to secure them on reservations out west, and those who chose to fight were fleeing south and taking refuge in this area. But Army scouts would have left no trace, and a larger company would have been well armed and had no need to conceal themselves.

Suddenly, we looked up and found we were surrounded by a dozen men with rifles cocked. Before we could react, a dark-skinned man dressed in once-fancy pants, a dress shirt, and bowler hat moved forward to take our guns. As I looked at the group, they were all dressed in similar fashion; the only native clothing was the moccasins on their feet. European blood was clearly evident in their features—a mixture of Creek Indian and whoever was hunting, trapping or trading on their lands at the time.

One man moved forward. “Who leads you?” he asked in English, clearly his native tongue.

I moved forward.

He laughed. “A boy?”

I looked at him and realized we were of the same age. “And you look no older than me.”

He ignored the comment and shocked me when he extended his hand in the fashion recently made popular by Thomas Jefferson. “I am Osceola.”

I gave him my name, moved toward him, took his rough hand in mine and squeezed. “Are you the Seminoles?” I asked.

“We are. I lead my tribe. And you look to be outlaws or pirates,” he said.

I saw his eyes move toward the boats lit in the moonlight and followed his gaze, thankful that we had left the moss covering the chests. He looked back at me.

“And what is a bunch of white pirates doing so far inland?”

I told him briefly of our escape from the Navy and the run-in with the tribe just downstream. For the time being I kept the rescue and abduction of Rory to myself, not knowing how they would react.

“You run from Andrew Jackson as well?”

So we were allied in that regard. I had heard the name, but didn’t know how it applied to us. “Yes. The Navy is after us.”

The Indians still held their rifles, but they lowered their weapons. Several of the men were grouped in the area where Rhames had found the fire, and I saw the spark of a flint. “No fires,” I said. “We just had a run-in with the Indians downstream.”