War Woman (2 page)

“Sir,” Merks nodded, following which the sergeant divided the men and then they parted ways to tie their horses out of sight behind the ridge before making the descent on foot. As the sergeant led the way, Jonathan observed Daniel’s grip on his rifle as they made their way down the ridge side by side.

“Nothing to worry about,” Jonathan smiled encouragingly. “You won’t need that. We’ll be done before you know it.”

Daniel responded with a slight smile. “I know. Still, nice to have it.”

The other team blended into the shadows until they disappeared completely into the night. Keeping a watchful eye as they progressed down the path, which wasn’t a path so much as an opportunity to break their necks with one false move, Jonathan tried to be as silent as possible and prayed that the warriors who had confronted them earlier wouldn’t spot them a second time.

After a slow descent Jonathan’s team finally made it to the base of the ridge. Hearing no commotion he assumed the second team had made it as well and had so far not been seen. Moving quietly through the shadows of the trees surrounding the village, the men advanced forwards while looking for opportune places to conceal themselves so they could watch the villagers without being discovered. Nearing the edge of the clearing and the back of one of the village dwellings, the sergeant indicated for the men to follow him as he pressed himself against the wall and peered around cautiously.

A large central fire blazed invitingly, around which sat several Cherokee. Further out various villagers moved about, completing daily tasks that needed to be done before retiring for the night. The soldiers took it in turn to survey the scene before falling back to discuss the situation.

“Okay, Wilson, this is what we’ll do. You take Haynes and scout ahead. Keep to the perimeter and remember everything you see. I want a full report when we meet up again. Haville and Perkins, you’re with me. I want everyone to make a full circle of the perimeter so that we can collate what we see. Ten pairs of eyes reduces the chance that we’ll miss something important. You should meet Merks and his team en route. Tell them the plan. By the end of this, each one of you should have a fairly good lay of the land. Now keep your eyes sharp. Those bastards have already got the drop on us. I won’t have that happening again.”

“Yes, sir.” Jonathan and Tobias Haynes, who was a year younger and slightly less experienced than Jonathan but still a competent soldier, slipped away into the shadows and headed East while the sergeant took Haville and Perkins West. Careful not to be seen and pausing when any of the villagers came near the edge of the village perimeter, Jonathan and Haynes made slow but steady progress around the village, making mental notes related to anything that might prove useful from a military point of view. Eventually they met up with Merks’s team and conveyed the sergeant’s message before continuing on. Regrouping at the rendezvous point after completing their reconnaissance, they hunkered down low and waited for the others to return. After twenty minutes had passed, Merks returned with his team.

“Sergeant not back yet?” Merks looked around the area as he led the men towards where Jonathan and Haynes waited.

“No.” Jonathan kept his gaze roaming around the area as well but more in order to spot any Cherokee warriors who may have slipped up close to them, as they had done so successfully before. The men gathered out of sight and waited but almost half an hour had passed with no sign of the sergeant, Perkins or Haville.

“Do you think something’s happened to them?” Haynes asked, a slightly worried expression on his face.

“I think we would have heard something if anything had happened. Probably a group of villagers got close to the perimeter and they had to wait it out before moving on.” Jonathan scanned the ridge, maintaining a neutral expression. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to display his concern. They waited another ten minutes before Jonathan decided that it was time to try and find out what was taking so long.

“Wait here. I’m going to go have a look over the ridge.”

Making his way stealthily towards the base of the ridge, he walked slowly up until he’d reached the peak. Lying flat on the ground, he crawled forwards and cautiously looked over the edge towards the opposite side of the ridge. Seeing nothing at first, he waited a few minutes until he eventually detected movement on the route the soldiers had taken to get down and back up the ridge.

Thank goodness, though it took them long enough
. Jonathan sighed in relief and waited for the figures to get closer. They were making slow progress however, and though the ground was treacherous, it shouldn’t have been that slow. Jonathan wondered what the problem was until he saw that they were carrying something. It looked bulky and heavy and required both Haville and Perkins to lift it as the sergeant appeared to guide their footsteps. Curious as to what they were bringing back, Jonathan continued to watch the men for several minutes until they were close enough that he could make out what they were carrying.

“Shit!” Jonathan cursed under his breath as the men neared the top of the ridge. Within a few minutes the sergeant spotted him and softly called him down.

“Wilson, get down here and help Haville and Perkins.”

Jonathan couldn’t believe the audacity of the sergeant, not to mention the sheer stupidity, but now was not the time to focus on that. He needed to help his fellow soldiers get over the ridge and out of sight as quickly as possible. Only when they had cleared the ridge and were safely out of sight did the men pause to rest, placing their load on the ground.

“Sir, what happened?” Jonathan looked in dismay at the Cherokee warrior who had addressed them earlier, now lying unconscious at his feet.

“I caught the bastard unawares. I can guarantee he didn’t expect me to step out from behind a tree while he was relieving himself. I took Haville’s rifle and knocked the bugger on the back of his head with the butt. I would have loved to have seen his expression but of course I couldn’t take the risk of anyone being alerted to our presence.”

“So you took the much more subtle route of knocking him out cold and essentially kidnapping him?”

The sarcasm in Jonathan’s voice was not lost on the sergeant. “Careful, Private. Watch that tone of yours.”

“Sir, the villagers are going to wonder where he went. They’ll start looking for him.”

“These people bugger off into the wilderness for days. Besides, the earliest people will think to look for him will be morning, after which point we’ll be long gone. This man is a criminal, Wilson. He is in direct defiance of the United States government and needs to be taught a lesson.”

“Sir, he hasn’t done anything wrong. These people are still legally allowed to be here. Wouldn’t you refuse to leave your home if you were in the same position?”

“Whose side are you on here, Wilson?” The sergeant narrowed his eyes and stared dangerously at Jonathan. “I hope you haven’t forgotten that’s a United States army uniform you’re wearing. Though maybe you’d prefer to go prancing around in the wild, half-naked with feathers in your hair and paint on your face like this savage? I can have that arranged if that’s the way you feel…”

“No, sir.” Jonathan ground the words out. The threat was unmistakable. Jonathan’s military career was in the sergeant’s hands. If he pissed him off too much, it would be the end of his life in the army, a dishonorable discharge, and that was the best outcome. At worst, he could find himself in jail. It was important to tread carefully where the sergeant was concerned. He was a man with connections, not to mention his own military reputation that was steadily increasing.

“I’m glad to hear it. Now pick him up and take him to the others.” The sergeant spat the words out as he marched down the ridge to the rendezvous point. Haville, Perkins and Wilson picked up the Cherokee and carried him down to where the other soldiers waited.

The soldiers looked surprised to say the least when they saw the Cherokee but nobody said anything except Merks. “I thought this was a reconnaissance mission, sir.”

“Well the brief’s changed. Now we have a prisoner. This man has defied the army and the government and needs to be punished.”

“Exactly what sort of punishment are we talking about, sir? What do you intend to do with him?”

“We’ll take him back to the camp with us. Then we’ll see how eager he is to defy us. Let him declare in front of the officers of the United States army how he intends to resist legal removal.” The sergeant looked smugly at the Cherokee warrior who still lay unconscious on the ground. “Now somebody find some rope and tie him up. Gag him too. We don’t want him escaping or alerting the village. The last thing we need is a bunch of savages descending on us.”

Probably should have thought of that before you kidnapped him
, Jonathan thought in disgust as he watched the sergeant walk away to tend to his horse and examine the map. He exchanged a look with Merks as two of the soldiers busied themselves with restraining the prisoner. With a gesture of his eyes, Merks indicated their own horses and moved off towards them. Following him, Jonathan paused in front of his horse which stood next to Merks’s horse, ostensibly checking over the saddle while the other man lifted his horse’s hooves and examined them.

“He’s reckless, but I didn’t know he was that reckless.” Jonathan’s whisper wasn’t loud enough to carry back to the others. “This isn’t about the Cherokee refusing to move. You can’t ignore the facts. They haven’t done anything wrong. They’re still legally within the time limit for voluntary removal. The sergeant is doing this out of spite because they bested us and he doesn’t strike me as a man who takes defeat easily. No doubt he’s pissed off with himself that he was outdone by a group of so-called savages.”

“We’re going to have to be extra-vigilant. The sergeant might not give them much credit but those Cherokee are smart. When they find out one of their own is missing it won’t take them long to figure out what happened.” The expression on Merks’s face mirrored what Jonathan felt inside.  “The sergeant is a good soldier. No, I take that back. He’s an excellent soldier; brave, impressive fighting skills, intelligent, but there are times when I get the distinct impression that he would happily sacrifice the lot of us in order to carry out a task successfully. Sometimes that’s necessary when the cause is more important than our survival. This petty vengeance isn’t one of those times. He’s endangered the whole damn group because of this.”

Jonathan could feel the anger radiating off Merks, though to the casual observer the soldier appeared calm. Still, both of them knew there was nothing they could do at this point. Setting the prisoner free so close to his village could be suicidal for the group of men, not to mention the fact that the sergeant would be furious and there would be hell to pay back at the camp. Just like Jonathan, every man in the group knew that the sergeant could get them thrown out of the army if he wanted to. Not that every man in the group necessarily shared Jonathan’s feelings about the Indian removals. No doubt a few of them supported the sergeant’s views but at least every one of them was practical enough to realize that kidnapping a Cherokee warrior so far from their own base, with the warrior’s village so close, was not an ideal situation.

Still, they had no option but to take the prisoner with them and return to base. Slinging the warrior’s body over the back of one of the horses, the soldiers mounted up and rode off, the pace of their horses brisk as they tried to put as much distance between themselves and the village as they could before exhaustion necessitated they sleep.

They rode for an hour, turning around in their saddles intermittently to make sure they weren’t being followed. Eventually the sergeant slowed his horse and indicated for the men to follow him as he veered off the route they were familiar with and made his way into the trees until they came to a small clearing.

“We’ll set up camp here for the night.” The sergeant dismounted from his horse to stretch his legs as he surveyed the clearing. “Tie the prisoner to the tree behind that rocky outcropping. You’ll have to make do without a fire tonight, boys. We’ll need to set up a watch. I’ll take the first shift ; Haville, you’ll take the second.”

As Haynes and Perkins carried the Cherokee to the tree and tied him in place, the others laid out their bedrolls and made sure their horses were watered at the small stream that flowed not far from the clearing before securing them for the night. Retrieving some of his rations from his saddlebag, Jonathan sat down on his bedroll and ate what passed for a meager meal before laying down and staring up at the sky. There were no clouds and the stars glittered back at him, cold and hard as diamonds as he considered the events that had unfolded over the last few hours.

The sergeant was no doubt going to make an example of the Cherokee warrior but Jonathan wasn’t sure how he was going to go about doing this. Would the warrior be interrogated by the officers for information about his village? Would they send him home with a final warning for the village to get removal preparations underway, probably with United States soldiers being sent to ensure they complied? This seemed the most likely course of action.

Questions and concerns buzzed around his mind like angry bees but eventually his exhausted body overrode his mind and Jonathan fell into a restless sleep. He had no idea how much time had passed when he awoke but it was still dark. Sitting up he looked around at the sleeping forms of the men around him. It was too dark to make out their faces but he could distinguish the individual mounds of each man as he slept within the circle formed by their bedrolls. That is, all the men except for the sergeant, who must still be on his watch.