Cow Tom managed to slip behind an upright beam, neither hidden nor exposed. He’d lost sight of Harry and stayed frozen, trying to think his way out of this mess. But the warriors were everywhere, hundreds, and finally he began to run. He tried to circle around to the stables, but two braves were on him before he’d barely built up momentum and they pinned his arms, pulling him backward toward the open area where rations were distributed. Harry was already there, along with the dragoon and several others. The supply convoy from earlier in the day and all the accompanying soldiers had left the fort before nightfall, and what remained were only the few soldiers permanently stationed at Fort Brooke. The measles outbreak had reduced the number of healthy soldiers significantly, that number less than ten. The diseased were relegated to the infirmary. The camp was more Seminole than military, more sick than fit.
Detainee Seminoles poured in from the surrounding areas of the fort, great masses of them, abandoning tent and sand and makeshift blanket. Women in flour-sack dresses stood alongside Seminole warriors dressed for battle, corn husks in their hair, faces streaked with red ocher. Cow Tom guessed at least two hundred warriors had descended on the fort, as from nowhere, more surging through the front gate even now as though they owned the entire garrison. Cow Tom waited with the rest of the captives, and the detainee Seminoles whispered among themselves in a loudening buzz. He heard the name from several directions at once.
“Osceola.”
His bladder went weak. Until now, his jobs had mostly been physical labor, or thickets of words to translate, or swamps to scout, or foxing the general, or spinning bold strategies to impress. This was life-and-death. He hoped he wasn’t a coward. There were more stories of Osceola than all other chiefs put together, the symbol of the resistance to remove all Seminoles from Florida. One quick glance at Harry confirmed. Harry was as panicked as he.
The night was bright, and Osceola stepped into the middle of the detention camp gathering, not far from the clutch of prisoners. He was nothing like Micanopy, in temperament or carriage: commanding, even magnetic, average height, and older than Cow Tom, somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. His face, neck, throat, and the back of his hands were streaked with red ocher, and he pulled his scalping knife from his war belt.
Osceola held up the knife, and the crowd quieted.
“I am Osceola,” he announced. A guttural cheer went up.
Cow Tom singled out faces in the crowd. One of the women who pounded coontie root. The brave who refused to talk to Cow Tom and Harry. The brave who fetched a piece of warm bread for the ranking chief. Micanopy and Jumper stood close by.
Osceola pointed to the prisoners. Cow Tom tried to swallow, but found he could not. Even if they had weapons, they were less than a dozen against a field of two hundred warriors and seven hundred detained Seminoles who greeted Osceola as inspiration.
“They cannot hold you here. They have no power over you. They confine you and spread their sickness among you. You are free to return to Seminole lands in Florida instead of making the trip to the holding pens in the west.”
The crowd cheered again.
“I will make the white man red with blood; and then blacken him in the sun and rain, where the wolf shall smell of his bones, and the buzzard live upon his flesh.”
Osceola pointed his finger at Micanopy’s chest.
“You led your people here, but they know moving from the ancestral land is not the way. You are principle chief of the Seminole, and must be respected, but a true chief will lead his people away from this place. A true chief will continue to fight. A true chief will not Remove.”
Micanopy stood rooted, flanked by Jumper. For all his girth and title, he looked small and vulnerable alongside Osceola’s slimness and surety of purpose.
“The military have guns, and food, and might,” Micanopy said. His voice sounded whiny in the night air. “The search teams track us like deer and drive us deeper into the Everglades to starve. What chance have we in Florida now? At least in Indian Territory we will not be hunted.”
Osceola played to the crowd. “Any who surrender are our enemy. We brought wagons and horses, and we will be on our way to Palaklikhaha before the break of day.”
Old man Micanopy seemed at a loss. Jumper inched closer to his chief, but before he could whisper into his ear, Osceola lowered his voice to speak directly to Micanopy.
“Micanopy, if you don’t lead your people out, I will, and I will leave you here for the enemy in your own blood.”
Micanopy assessed the sea of Seminole faces surrounding him. For this, he needed no adviser. He held up his hand.
“The Seminoles are a great people,” he announced in a thunderous voice to Osceola and the crowd, “and we will take up arms and fight the white man until our last breath.”
Once again there arose a group cry of support, and Cow Tom understood their time was short. All that remained was to loot the fort and flee into the Everglades. No need leaving prisoners alive to pursue them, or to alert the U.S. Army. Cow Tom wondered how Osceola would kill them, whether fast or slow, personally or through agents. His guess was fast, since they had to move so many in one night. He wondered whether it would be him or Harry who’d watch the other die first.
As if Cow Tom summoned attention with his thoughts, Osceola looked in the direction of the prisoners, assessing his options. They stood in wait, ringed by war-painted warriors.
Osceola motioned toward Cow Tom and Harry.
“Blacks,” he said.
Four braves grabbed Cow Tom and Harry by the arms. Cow Tom’s knees had gone feeble, and he thought they might have to help him move, but he refused to be dragged like a cow to slaughter. He straightened his legs and walked, until they were so close to Osceola he could see for the first time the burls of pitted scars down both cheeks. The braves closed behind them like a curtain, separating them from the others. They prodded Cow Tom forward. There was no point resisting. Whatever was going to happen was already on its way into being.
“Who do you belong to?” Osceola asked.
Cow Tom found voice first, although he couldn’t quite marshal his thoughts, and answered the first thing that came into his head. “General Jesup sent us yesterday to the fort to report on conditions, but we came to seek out Abraham. My mother is with the Seminoles, and I’m trying to find her.”
Osceola considered this, deliberating. Cow Tom’s thoughts scattered, random images flitting through his head, of Amy’s strong hands flattening Indian bread for the fire, of his daughter’s waddling walk alongside the creek bed. But then he imagined the first lance of the knife’s sharp blade, the picking of vultures through his bones after his broken body was left to dry in the sun. He could only hope the end came swiftly.
Osceola was quick with his knife. As if in one motion, he pulled at the tip of Cow Tom’s ear and sliced clean through from top to bottom, and held up the bloody flap. Red spurted, and dripped down to Cow Tom’s collar, and he cried out, as much in surprise as over the stinging burn where his right earlobe used to be. It came so fast Cow Tom barely associated the bloodied mass as his until the pound and throb brought him to focus, and he clutched at the right side of his head. Osceola watched him through narrowed eyes, and Cow Tom sensed an unexpected hesitancy. He forced himself to straighten up, as if momentarily caught off guard by nothing more than a wasp’s prick, of little consequence. He stifled both the scream of pain and the scream of terror competing to surface.
Jumper stepped forward. The counselor made no pretense of going through Micanopy, and the fat chief didn’t protest. He seemed as irrelevant as Cow Tom in the exchange.
“He did ask after Abraham this morning,” Jumper confirmed.
Cow Tom’s head wasn’t clear, some angle to figure he couldn’t quite grasp. If Jumper involved himself, there was indeed an angle. It took Cow Tom’s full concentration to remain upright.
“
Where is Abraham?” Osceola asked Jumper.
“They took him to Fort Volusia with the rest of the Negroes,” Jumper said.
“We need our black warriors to fight by our side.” He turned again to Cow Tom. Osceola’s stare was fierce, but Cow Tom saw how deeply fatigue played at the corners of his mouth and his eyes, how hunger and want weighed down his features. “Are you government?”
Cow Tom allowed himself a faint flicker of hope. Sound came to him as if confused by its own echo, both muffled and clear simultaneously, but he willed himself to focus. “We go where our masters say we must, work for who we must. The general pays our masters, and we translate. That is the way of it. We are not government.”
Osceola thought about this. “Tell Abraham we wait for him to lead his people out to join us.”
Cow Tom nodded, mutely. He didn’t volunteer that he didn’t really know Abraham, and had no authority to go to Fort Volusia. He didn’t ask Osceola how unarmed blacks were supposed to break free from a fort surrounded by white men willing to siphon off any slave who couldn’t prove ownership by a Seminole. Osceola had already shifted his attention elsewhere, finished with the burdensome talk of blacks and Indians.
The braves who held them released their hold, and Cow Tom and Harry stood where they were. Harry touched Cow Tom, lightly, on the arm, and made the first slow move away from the congested center of the swarm of Seminole detainees organizing themselves to flee. Cow Tom followed, the flow of blood slowing, but still dripping down the side of his face and soaking his shirt, and they eased their way toward the stables.
Their horses were still there, put up for the night, and they claimed them, saddling quickly and walking them out toward the front gate of the fort, where they mounted and waited.
“Our chances are better in plain sight than trying to hide until Osceola clears out,” Harry said to Cow Tom.
The night wind played havoc with Cow Tom’s ear, a strange humming set to tune.
“If they leave us our horses, we might beat this yet,” Cow Tom said.
Chapter 9
COW TOM MOUTHED a silent prayer, his pony solid beneath him as they waited by the fort’s gate. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been there, he and Harry, but surely two hours at least. The pain on the right side of his head had settled to a constant thrumming, as if his heart sought escape through the absent ear. But they were still alive.
“We aren’t clear yet,” said Harry.
Harry stated the obvious, and Cow Tom found amusement in the man’s seriousness. Something wasn’t working quite right with Cow Tom’s mood, as if he’d stumbled into some territory beyond fear whose mother tongues were acceptance and fate. Prudence seemed to have fled in the memory of Osceola waving his bloody ear flap before the crowd.
“If spared, I pledge the rest of my life to the Negro cause,” Cow Tom said. “Freedom and justice for every black man in the tribe. Bar none.”
A grand gesture. He imagined himself reflected in Harry’s gaze, his head leaking blood, grossly outnumbered, but offering up negotiation points. A true bargainer. A true linguister. He was almost dizzy with his boldness.
“I join you in that pledge,” said Harry. “A pact.”
“A pact.”
Cow Tom and Harry kept themselves unthreatening but visible, watching passively as the detainees emptied the storehouse, took military rifles, gathered their few belongings and meager, hoarded supplies, and prepared for escape into the Everglades.
By the hundreds, the Seminoles spilled out of the camp and into the nearby woods, where horses and wagons waited, Cow Tom and Harry atop their ponies at the fort’s gate as they streamed past. Osceola gave an order and two of his braves slit the throats of the captured soldiers, including the Fort King dragoon. They didn’t take time to scalp, but left them for dead, unceremoniously sprawled on the ground where they fell. Osceola seemed surprised to see Cow Tom and Harry as he passed through the Fort Brooke entrance, but finally nodded, as if remembering his earlier act of leniency.
They remained motionless until they were sure Osceola was gone. Only then did they dismount, and Harry doubled over, retching, and stayed down for some time. Cow Tom fought hard not to follow suit, waiting for Harry to right himself. He touched his ear, the blood no longer aflow, but soft-crusting, the steady throb familiar to him now.
They checked for survivors among the prisoners, but the soldiers were dead, and Harry and Cow Tom left them where they fell. They searched the rest of the camp, leading their horses. Among the detritus left behind, they came across a young Seminole woman who had stayed, ragged and frightened, hiding on the far side of an overturned wagon, holding a small, naked baby.
“Why didn’t you leave with Osceola?” Harry asked in Miccosukee.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes, continuing to look down. Harry asked again, less gently.
“Tired,” the woman finally said, and clutched her listless baby tighter to her bony chest. She refused to say more, rocking her baby, rocking herself, claiming her patch of littered, sandy ground.
They moved on, and secured the horses to a hitching post.
“We have to check inside,” said Cow Tom.
In the first of the fort’s outer buildings, they discovered several small bands of Seminole women in hiding who hadn’t fled. They eyed Cow Tom and Harry with caution, and the translators left them undisturbed, and entered the main building. They found a lantern with a small reservoir of kerosene in a side office, and struck a match to light their way. Osceola’s people had stripped the storage room of its contents. Spilled flour and stray husks of corn were scattered about. The lantern threw ghostly shadows against the walls, and they proceeded slowly, delaying the moment. Cow Tom went first, and then Harry, and they entered the outbuilding at the rear, set aside for the sick.
They heard groans as they entered the hallway, and braced themselves for the worst. The odor of sulfur and putrefying flesh hung heavy in the air. One swing of the lantern revealed at least two dozen single cots pushed close together, some elevated, some on the damp floor, some with more than one man inhabiting the space. By beard and look, Cow Tom assumed them all soldiers, although none were in military dress, stripped down to their dirty, sweat-stained civvies. The room was packed with the sick—moaning, feverish, calling out for water, trapped in troubled sleep, but alive, throats uncut, scalps attached.
Neither Cow Tom nor Harry wanted to enter. The room itself was dark, and as they approached, a man on the cot closest to the door threw up his hand to shield his face, closing his rheumy eyes tight against the lantern’s light. His face was a swollen swirl of lesions, red and angry, and followed a line of advance down his body, speckling his arms and legs.
“Water,” he rasped, voice barely audible, the words almost lost in a round of brassy coughing.
Something fell and clattered on the floor, and Cow Tom swung the arc of lantern light toward an interior door.
“Come out,” Cow Tom warned. He felt for his knife but it had been taken by one of Osceola’s braves. The door slowly swung toward them, revealing the young soldier who had handled their horses in the stable yesterday. He couldn’t be more than eighteen, still in uniform, a pistol in his unsteady hand.
“What are you about there?” Cow Tom asked.
“They let them go then?” the young soldier asked.
“No,” said Cow Tom. “The soldiers are dead.”
A twitch played havoc about his mouth. “The Indians?”
“Most followed Osceola to the swamps. All Seminoles with fight are gone.” Cow Tom spoke slowly, his eye on both the gun and the boy’s face.
The soldier lowered his pistol. “Seemed best to hide,” he said. “Better measles than a lost scalp. They took one look and left this room be.” The soldier raised his pistol again and pointed. “Why didn’t Osceola kill you?”
“Didn’t consider us soldiers,
I guess,” Harry said.
“What name you go by?” asked Cow Tom.
“Billy.”
Cow Tom took a step backward, farther out of the darkened room.
“Well, Billy, I’ve no interest in measles,” Cow Tom said.
The boy considered. What little resolve he possessed evaporated, and he lowered the gun a second time. He kept to the outskirts of the room, walking toward them, and sat down on the floor near the open door. “I couldn’t truck being left like this, no food, no water,” he said. “A week ago, was me on that cot.”
“Harry and I can fetch water, and you give it to the men. Osceola’s people pretty much bankrupted the storeroom, but we’ll bring round what’s left, and scout for more.”
The boy agreed and Harry and Cow Tom left him there, relieved to be outside, away from the stink of disease and misery. Outside was death’s leavings, inside was toxic affliction. They preferred outside.
Harry and Cow Tom salvaged what they could find scattered around the deserted camps. They weren’t the only ones foraging. Some of the Seminoles who stayed behind had already lit fires, and huddled wordlessly in small groups. They didn’t talk to Cow Tom or Harry, and the translators didn’t talk to them. Each went about their business, waiting for daylight. Cow Tom and Harry found containers, drew buckets of fresh water from the tower, and dragged them to the door of the infirmary. Each time they returned, they saw Billy holding to his part of the bargain, distributing water to those crying out for it, although the boy had no real talent at the sickbed, and stopped often to rest. He left food by the cots, but most of the sick’s appetites had fled, and the corn bits and hardtack were as likely to be consumed by rats as by the fevered men.