Inwardly
Ravening Wolves

A Joseph Fisher
Colonial Mystery

 © 1998 by Clayton Emery

My first Joseph Fisher story that shows his never-say-die tenacity.



"Hall-ooooo, the wolf!"

"Where is he?"

"There he goes! Get him, Joe! Block him!"

Lacking a musket, tangled armpit-deep in sumac, pin oaks, and bittersweet, Joseph Fisher saw a gray blur lolloping straight at him.

He glimpsed a striped muzzle and molten golden eyes, flapped his arms and hollered to slow the wolf, but the canny animal bounced on its toes, skipped sideways in mid-air, bounded a rod's length. Joseph heard thrashing from either hand, men swearing in two languages. He dove headlong.

Twin muskets exploded KA-BUFF! KA-PLAM! above his head. Buckshot shredded branches and a lead ball slammed the earth. The wolf vaulted over Joseph and vanished into the puckerbrush, a loping shadow, gone, unharmed.

Strong hands hoisted Joseph to his feet like a child. English boomed, "Woof! Almost tagged you 'stead'a that chicken thief!"

Algonquin joked, "Your head would look ill adorning the longhouse door!"

Coughing, Joseph brushed his shabby snuff-brown coat and breeches, combed back his long brown hair. Big Paul Hopkins sported a tricorn, stained hunting smock, shot bag, powder horns. Opechee, or Robin, wore a deerhide mantle, blue breechclout and leggins, a coating of vermilion and fish oil, a cockscomb black with soot. He toted a scalping knife, bearskin warbag, and short musket gaudy with brass tacks.

"A circle of hunters like ducks in a pond," swore Paul, "and that bloody wolf picks the only fellow not carrying a firelock!"

"No accident," Joseph husked. "A wolf can recognize - a man - without a gun."

"Malsum is brother to Glooskap, so also a trickster, but without any goodness." Opechee spoke in Algonquin, for he had no English.

"What's he say?" asked Paul.

"He said - a shoemaker should stick to his last. And a student to - his books -" Tumbling in old leaves set him coughing, and he doubled in pain as his lungs spasmed and throbbed. Sallow, sharp-cheeked, sunken-eyed, Joseph was cursed with consumption.

Paul handed Joseph a pine canteen, then Opechee a musket ball big as a hickory nut. Joseph sipped to quiet his wheezing while his companions reloaded with ramrods and horns. But when Opechee tried to drop Paul's musket ball down the bore, he found it too large by an eighth of an inch, so returned it. He told Joseph, "Your friend is generous, not like most white men."

"He shares because he owns little. Their good book says, `Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.'"

Paul switched the musket ball for eight pellets like dried peas. "Not surprised it don't fit. English guns run .75 caliber, throw more lead'n anyone's. But buckshot'll drop a deer, tell him." Without understanding the words, Opechee nodded thanks.

Brush thrashed as the villagers of Hull gathered. Paul's father, head of the wolf hunt, rasped, "It'd be you beetlebrains the bung to spill the ale! Curse God and die, one a head of wood and the other wool, and now an Indian with worms in his skull!"

Joseph could understand the elder's petulance. The marauding wolf had pestered the village for weeks, filching lambs and chickens and cats, digging up middens, scratching at doors, making dogs bark all night. Finally fifty men and boys had come a'hunting, beating the bushes and hallooing the day long, sweeping from the forest towards the seashore to drive and encircle the wolf. Joseph had been the weak link in the chain.

Yet he was secretly glad. Up close, the student had felt those golden eyes bore into his, sensed bravado and fear and a plea for pity, known a kinship. A lone wolf driven from his pack, struggling to survive without home or family. Like Joseph himself.

Men smoked and chewed. Opechee ignited kinnikinnic rank as scorched manure. Joseph shared his pipe while checking the sky. Though only midafternoon, dusk was near, for it was March, or Mozokas the Moose Hunter, on the Maine coast. Grainy snow lingered under holly and hemlock, yet the spring air was tangy with pine pitch and oak tannin.

Mister Hopkins pointed his pipe stem at anvil-shaped thunderheads. "Weather's makin'. Best turn for home. 'Haps we'll try again tomorrow, if it don't rain and the womenfolk'll let us."

Men muttered about missing chores, but hunting wolves beat pushing a plow or jerking stumps. Joseph doubted they'd see the wolf tomorrow. Close to, he'd seen the beast was heavy-bellied, gorged to his blood-flecked nose, and would den up. Idly, the student wondered what the glutton had caught, since a late spring after a hard winter made deer and timber elk scarce.

Shouldering muskets sloppily, the villagers bashed through puckerbrush like bug-mad moose. One man fired at crows. Others yelled coarse jokes. Opechee shook his head. "They wander like children picking wild strawberries."

Joseph nodded. "I try to warn them, but they do not listen. Mayhaps when the Arosaguntacooks or Kennebecs pluck a few scalps they will attend. But white men are like red. Stubborn." He enjoyed the low lilting Abenaki tongue, which reminded him of Greek. "Will you join us on the morrow, brother?"

"I think not, Monminowis." Silver Cat was Joseph's Abenaki name. "The Sheepscots smoke shad at their summer camp at Pemaquid. I was blood brother to a Sheepscot once, his totem the same as mine. Perhaps they will take me in. If you are Penobscot, why do you live amidst the English?"

Joseph shrugged. "There are many trails in the forest, yet a man can only walk one. I was captured and raised by Penobscots, then given to the Jesuits in Quebec, but peace returned me to the English. A woman sent me to a house of learning to become a missionary, but the smoky longhouses of Boston inflamed my coughing sickness, so Paul invited me here to build ships. I rescued him from books, he jests." A final shrug. "It is no different to live among white men than red."

"Wagh! As different as Mikowa the squirrel lives from Tummock Quauog the beaver! So you have no real home."

Joseph stumbled. "That is what I try to say."

"Neither have I a place to hang my bow. My tribe, the Nipmucks, were driven from Massachusetts. We joined my wife's people, the Pigwackets, at the head of the Piscataqua to winter. But my wife died giving birth when last the leaves turned."

"I am sorry," said Joseph. "So you too are a lone wolf, like him we chased. And like me." Opechee nodded.

"You two gabble like dogs over a bone," rumbled Paul. "Makes a fellow lonely. And hungry."

Joseph chuckled and translated. Opechee laughed deep in his belly. "Tell Young Bear we three mighty hunters might together kill a porcupine."

After translation, Paul replied, "Pour maple syrup on it and I'll eat it. Can't stick any worse than my sister's cooking." The three laughed again.

The party struck the road, just a widened game trail that skirted trees and humped over granite ledge. Hull didn't need a proper wagon road because supplies came by sea from Portsmouth. And Hull was now frontier, the northernmost English settlement, because more distant villages had been abandoned in the renewal of war. The spring of 1703 had already brought raids on isolated homesteads; men butchered, women and children captured by "French Indians" and coureurs de bois, savage Canadian trappers. So today's wolf hunt doubled as a militia training day.

Yet in this lull before the storm, Opechee had been welcome peddling venison and turkeys, for white men were notoriously bad hunters and now shunned the woods. And rather than squander his money on rum, the clear-eyed Opechee bought only buckshot and powder. Joseph had translated his transactions, then invited Opechee to sleep by the Hopkins's hearth. Warmed by rum and cider, the three young men had talked the night away, the translations growing blurrier and funnier.

Casually, Opechee commented, "There would be room at the flakes of Pemaquid. Extra hands are always welcome."

"I understand, and appreciate your - generous invitation." Walking and talking set Joseph wheezing. "But `a man may not serve two masters.' And they need me to - help protect the village."

"That is true. It is amazing the English let their pallisade rot. Are they children lost in the wilderness, to believe praying will keep the red hatchets at bay?" He took another tack. "If the Sheepscots do take the warpath, many young women left behind will pine."

Joseph joked, "There are enough women in Hull to suit me."

"Young Bear's sister, who knits badly from watching you and not her hands? She is wrapped in wool like a green sheep! The women tending the flakes will wear only breechclouts, which peel off easily."

"Gutting fish makes women slippery. Too hard to hold onto."

Opechee almost smiled. "You would fare better with an Abenaki woman. English woman are cold, I hear, like fish taken through the ice."

"Only their feet are cold," Joseph chuckled. "Other parts are warm."

The joke was so good Opechee's laugh was audible to Paul. He said, "Bustin' a gut, you must be gassin' about girls."

"No," Joseph teased, "only food. Sweetmeats."

Paul snorted. "Call Anne sweetmeat and she'll box your ears till they ring. That girl can hit hard. Trust her brother."

Men swore as the road dissolved into a wallow of lacy hemlocks where black flies swarmed. The party hopped over puddles and tripped over knobby roots, dancing as they slapped and swatted. It was four miles yet to the village when a choked cry rang from the front. "Good lord! It's - Elias Somers!"

White-faced villagers stumbled backwards. A boy turned from the trail to be sick. Paul cursed. Joseph shouldered to the fore and learned what the lone wolf had feasted upon.

Elias Somers sprawled in the road in two halves. Ribs and backbone shone white where the wolf had scavenged organs and cracked bones for marrow. His blood-smeared musket and hunting tackle lay scattered about. A porcupine had gnawed the musket grip for the salt-sweat.

Despite a lifetime of butchering livestock and game, these hardened pioneers swore and prayed as they swatted flies. Yet Joseph squatted over the remains and opened his clasp knife. Propped by his musket, Opechee scooched to watch.

"For chrissake, Joe," Mister Hopkins growled, "don't muck about with your eternal questions. It ain't right to desecrate a body."

"`The physicist is a ripper-up of natural bodies and of nature.'" The student poked the ribs into order. "We needs determine what killed him."

"What?" barked several. "It's pretty damned obvious! The wolf et him!"

Squinting in black flies, Joseph plied his knife. "No, sir. A starving pack may pull down a man, but a lone wolf would never attack a man in full fettle, especially one with a gun." He repeated this to Opechee in Algonquin.

The Indian grunted neither yes nor no. "Perhaps the man set his gun aside to relieve himself. Or tripped and struck his head. Malsum might risk attack then. He is hungry after a long winter. Perhaps he smelt the gun was empty."

"Indians, likely." A man looked sidelong at Opechee. "A party of Frenchies on the warpath could'a snuck up on him."

"They'd not leave his scalp and musket." As if toying, Joseph fit bone fragments together.

"Probably he fell down drunk," muttered a man.

"Aye," Paul added, "Elias and Rob always took grog in their canteens to keep 'em from freezin', even in July." At the first threat of war, Elias Somers and Robert Macintosh had shooed their families back to Massachusetts, given up farming for frontiering.

"So, hey, where is Rob? Could the wolf'a got both?"

"Eureka!" Joseph held up a curved rib. Both ends looked gnawed, but when he fit the fragment to the ribcage, a neat half-moon appeared along the upper edge.

"Bigod! A musket ball!"

"Square in the brisket!"

Paul muttered, "Damn, but you've got good eyes, Joe."

In Latin, Joseph quipped, "`Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.' A ball broke this rib and dealt the deathblow. I doubt the wolf was armed."

"So who done it? And where the hell's -"

"Hoy, there he is! Hey, Rob! D'ja hear the..?"

The hail died in the air. Stamping down the road came a haunted scarecrow in a filthy hunting shirt and floppy hat. His face was unshaven and insect-bitten, his eyes sunken from a night in the woods. A rusty musket trailed in his bony right hand.

Men fell back from the apparition, leaving Joseph and Opechee to rise slowly to their feet. Opechee cradled his musket. "What does this woods man -"

Rob Macintosh halted, raised his musket, racked back the hammer, and pulled the trigger.

Smoke puffed from the pan, burst from the barrel. Opechee spun and slammed to the ground. He kicked, writhed, flung out a hand, but before Joseph could touch him, the Indian was dead.

Mister Hopkins ripped the warm musket from the frontiersman's grasp. "Rob, what the hell are you doing?"

"He killed Elias!" rasped the frontiersman. "Shot him from ambush! Dead center from behind these hemlocks!"

Confused and angry words. Paul Hopkins bellowed, "You got no right to kill that man!"

"He ain't a man!" Macintosh's breath smelt of rum. "He's an Indian! He murdered Elias!"

"There's murder, all right, and you done it!" Paul roared back. "That Indian spent the night with us! He was mild as milk!"

Macintosh shook his head as if at flies. "He must'a been spyin'! Sent on ahead'a the war party! You was lucky he didn't unbar the door to let 'em hatchet you in your sleep! We're at war!"

"He was selling venison and buying ammunition!" Paul Hopkins spat on the ground. "If Opechee killed him, he'd'a taken his scalp and musket! But then walk into town bold as brass? Walkin' the woods's addled your brain, you Johnny-Come-Lately!"

"You go to hell! You ain't out here watching your hair! You're locked in a safe-house where you don't know nothin'!" The frontiersman whipped out a scalping knife with a staghorn handle.

Thinking he was attacked, Paul trapped the man's arm in a meaty fist. "Do your worst -"

Macintosh yanked free. "I'm taking his scalp! It'll fetch twenty pounds in York, same as a wolf tail, and I aim to have the money for Elias's kin!"

"Be damned to that! You ain't scalpin' no one, you lousy lying -"

"Look out!" yelled half a dozen.

Hissing, Macintosh swung, but Paul batted his arm so the knife flew into the hemlocks. The two men grappled, punched, tangled and tumbled. Villagers aimed kicks at Macintosh.

Unnoticed, Joseph laid his hand on Opechee's breast, felt the flesh grow cold. "Walk on the light to Pemaquid, friend redbreast. May your soul feast on super-shad and sport with comely maidens." He rubbed his own chest and then Opechee's, the Abenaki handshake, then closed the bulging eyes. Gently Joseph slipped off the warbag and donned it, picked up the fallen trade gun, checked the priming.

Paul Hopkins and Rob Macintosh were yanked apart. Restrained, the brawlers hollered obscenities until they ran out of breath. Then Paul spruced his clothes and tackle, yanked on his tricorn. Macintosh rubbed a sore jaw, pointed at Joseph. "That warbag - and musket - are mine. Spoils'a war."

"Of course," said the student mildly. "I'll just carry them for you."

Mister Hopkins took his time juggling flint and steel and charcloth to light his pipe, then gushed blue smoke. "All right, Rob, let's have it."

"I told ya! We was huntin', and this Indian rears up and shoots Elias! I thought it was a war party! I got scared and run and I ain't ashamed to admit it! You look in his warbag, tell me you don't find a pewter crucifix!"

Joseph lifted the flap on the bearskin bag, sifted possibles. "No crucifix."

Mister Hopkins tapped his pipe on his teeth. "Could he a'been French, Joe?"

"No. His tongue lay in the south. He called the beaver tummock quauog after the Narragansetts, not tmakwa as we do up here."

Macintosh interjected, "That don't mean nothing! Any Indian'd kill a white man any chance he got! A white scalp's worth eight pounds in Quebec!"

Mister Hopkins looked to his Indian expert. Joseph didn't know what to say. Even after decades of friction and intrusion, many Indians were still ambivalent about the English settlers; pests like black flies, but a source of lead, gunpowder, copper kettles, rum. And unless poisoned against the English by Jesuits, Indians harbored their hatred for centuries-old feuds. A Nipmuck would hate Pequots and Mohegans; an Abenaki hate Tarrantines and Mohawks. But of personal grievances he could know nothing, and he'd only met Opechee yesterday... Nudged, Joseph sighed, "I don't know. Indians are as unpredictable as white men."

Paul Hopkins growled, "So it's Rob's word against a dead Indian's."

Macintosh snorted. He found his hunting knife, straddled Opechee's corpse, incised the scalp and yanked it free with a pop. Stuffing the grisly trophy in his belt, he picked up his rusty firelock, snatched up Elias's musket and tackle. In the brittle silence, villagers turned to go home.

Joseph's delicate cough arrested them. "We should continue our pursuit. The wolf's belly is full, so he won't go far. Together we can run him to ground. As Mister Macintosh stated, a wolf tail fetches twenty pounds."

"But -" Paul was nonplussed by his strange friend. "You never cared for money, Joe! You didn't even want to come wolf huntin'!"

"I can buy books in Portsmouth," Joseph reproved. "Whoever goes splits the bounty. Mister Macintosh, will you accompany us? It's your friend's been stripped of his dignity."

Wary as a fox at a deadfall, Macintosh sniffed. "I s'pose. I need the money for victuals."

"Rum is a vittle!" Paul sneered. "And hunting wolves beats working, don't it?"

The men puffed up like gamecocks until Mister Hopkins threatened to clout both. "Let it go, ladies. Get after the wolf if you've a mind. We'll tote Elias and his gear back to Hull. But beware'a Indians out here as well as wolves. Live ones."

Paul pointed to the scalped Opechee. "We're just gonna leave him here?"

Macintosh spat. "Let the wolves have 'im!"

Paul turned to his friend, but Joseph had already started on their backtrail. Rob Macintosh and three more villagers followed. Paul tilted branches aside with his musket, but they snapped back, whisked off his tricorn, scratched his face. "Bloody wonderful. Off to a fine start."

Consumptive or not, Joseph tracked at a dogtrot, skirting hemlocks on a winding trail no wider than a deer's flanks. The colonists puffed after flicking branches and the gray of Joseph's socks. As the ground became bony, he trod silently from root to root and slid under dead branches, while the Mainers thrashed and clawed sweat and bugs and evergreen needles from their faces.

A quarter-mile on, they left low ground and entered climax forest. Two-hundred foot pines with nothing growing below made a cathedral of green-filtered light cold as firefly glow. Their footsteps were muffled by moss and shed needles.

Paul jogged up, "Joe, you're queer as a - six-legged cat! One minute - you're half-asleep, the next - you're shooting along - like grain through a goose! Can we rest?"

Joseph nodded, squatted on his heels with Opechee's musket, watched the forest in all directions, including up and down. Pine mist soothed his aching lungs. After the death, the Mainers were wary, and spread out with levelled muskets. Tobacco chewers spat often. Joseph thought the chance of ambush slim where the line of sight was furlongs, not like back amidst the tight-knit hemlocks, but said nothing. Rob Macintosh stalked ahead to track the wolf.

"That bloody Macintosh! Boils me like a lobster! And lies like a gypsy, the bastard! I'd believe a dead skunk over him!" Paul squatted, grunting. "You know how to handle that trade gun? Looks French."

"Dutch."

"Hunh? How d'ya know that?"

"The design is from Tulle, a fusil de chasse, but the lock is German, probably from Solingen. The bore is .62 or .65 caliber. This brass snake the merchants of Albany install especially for the Iroquois: it can be Manitou Kinnebec or At-o-sis, Mother of Serpents who birthed the Mohawk race. The Nipmuck must have traded for it or else captured it in a raid." Joseph refrained from naming the dead Indian lest he disturb his ghost. "Ready?"

A mile later the land folded up at granite ledge. Pines gave way to scabby oaks and mountain laurel. Macintosh had lost the trail. Joseph tracked from side to side, found where the wolf leapt from ledge into the barricade of laurel. Circling the impassible thicket, he spotted a tuft of white belly hair on a twig. Men grunted and followed.

Ahead, a granite outcrop like a small castle was crowned with cedars, pin oaks, and birches misted with spring greenery. Joseph hunkered to study a sheer wall, signalled silence.

Paul gasped up. "What're we gawking at?"

"Look there." The student pointed low.

"Where?"

"At the bottom."

Paul squinted in the gathering gloom. Joseph stifled a sigh. "Under the ledge. The dark streak. It's a cave."

"That ain't no cave! A cave's - oh!"

Then they saw. A shadow under a lip was actually a crack perhaps a foot high and nine long. Joseph paced across lichens and teaberries to the slit.

Paul whispered, "How do you know he's in there?"

Squatting, Joseph wafted a hand towards his face, sniffed wet-dog must in the ground. A dry oak leaf showed triangular punctures: claw marks. "He went in but has yet to come out. He's full of - food - so will sleep."

Men started as overhead a warbler trilled jerkily. Paul scratched his forehead. "Some things they don't teach at Harvard, eh? What now? Blast hell out'a him, or smoke him out?"

"Neither. I'll crawl in."

"What?"

"Mister Macintosh." Joseph was unperturbed. "May I beg a musket ball?""

"Joe! You can't go in there!" Paul was done whispering. "That critter'll tear you apart!"

"No, he's too sated to move." Joseph kept his hand out. "And a wolf won't attack a man unless it's starving or cornered."

"It's cornered in there, you damned fool!"

Wary, wondering, Macintosh fished in his warbag, handed Joseph a fat musket ball.

Paul interjected, "And you've left your brains behind the door again! You're already loaded with buckshot! And an English ball won't go down that barrel!"

Placid, Joseph compared Macintosh's ball to the bore of Opechee's trade gun, found it too large by an eighth of an inch. "Oh, yes, I forgot." Shrugging, Macintosh dropped the ball back in his warbag. Paul frowned at his friend's dense display.

The student checked his weapon. The priming was dry, the gray flint sharp enough to cut his thumb. Satisfied, Joseph skinned a curl of birch bark, stuffed it with cedar needles, struck flint and steel for a watery flame.

"I shall crawl in and shoot. If I get stuck I'll holler. Pull me out by my feet."

"Stuck?" Paul chirped. "Stuck in a black hole while a wolf chews your face off? Joe, you don't have to do this! You're mad!"

"`The first step towards madness is to think oneself wise.'" With a gallows grin, Joseph shucked coat and waistcoat, dropped to his knees. Juggling the burning birch candle and dragging the Indian musket by the barrel, he slid into the slot like a snake.

It was black. Joseph paused to shake the birch candle brighter, wriggled on elbows and stomach and toes. The fug of wolf fur and carrion made his nose itch and lungs burn. As the crack narrowed, he chipped his chin on a root. For a moment, panic shrilled that he would get stuck, but if the deep-chested wolf could pass, so could a skinny student. Chill earth under his nose showed new claw marks. Jiggling the candle, hauling the heavy musket, he crawled on.

Then he saw.

Generations of wolves had kicked and clawed dirt outside until the cave was round and chambered like a cow's stomach. At the back lay a gray-and-white spectre. Yellow eyes bored into Joseph's from eight feet away. Curious, wary, the wolf growled experimentally to see if the man retreated.

How strange, thought the student, that he felt more kinship for this lonely beast than for the men outside. Strange and sad because, gasping, Joseph propped his elbows, fumbled the musket to his shoulder, racked back the hammer, aimed below the golden eyes.

"Forgive me, Malsum. I act for the sake of a dead robin. `Truth is always bitter.'"

The wolf growled again, the sound rising.

Joseph pulled the trigger.

He'd forgotten about the noise.

In the confined chamber, the musket's KA-PLAM! was horrendous. Joseph saw the spark in the pan, felt the kick at his shoulder, then it seemed the walls smashed against his head. By the gun's yellow flare he saw the wolf blown back, then clouds of sewage-rank smoke set him gagging and coughing.

Something latched onto his ankles and hauled him backwards like a pike on a line. Slithering helplessly, Joseph's chin clipped the root again, and he lost the musket. His bared chest dragged over dirt and rocks. He erupted outside into fresh air and twilight.

A worried Paul towered above. His mouth gaped, obviously shouting, but all Joseph heard was a vast ringing in his ears like a thunderstorm in a bottle.

Joseph brushed his bloody chin, his dirty chest, waved black hands, shouted, "Never mind! Give me another musket! And hurry! It's still alive!" A lie.

Men gabbled like some pantomime. Staggering, Joseph snatched away Rob Macintosh's musket. The woodsman's lips puckered in outrage, but the student ignored him, shouldered the weapon, aimed at the cedars above, fired. The gun banged his bruised shoulder silently.

Forgetting they could hear, Joseph gestured to Paul for buckshot and powder. Paul offered a musket ball, but Joseph refused it, bellowed, "I don't want the ball to ricochet inside the cave!" Another lie: he'd apologize later.

Loading buckshot, wadding with cedar needles, priming the pan, checking the flint was sharp, Joseph dropped to his knees, was handed another birch candle, wriggled back inside.

The cave stank of earth and blood and smoke and bowels. The candle was almost useless, but Joseph saw the dead wolf on its side, unmoving.

This time the student cradled an arm around his head before firing. Afoul in smoke and dust, Joseph coughed as he drew his clasp knife. Propping the birch candle in the dirt, he attacked the hammer of Robert Macintosh's musket. Nose to the ground, he found a gray-striped rock and spent a minute clamping it tight.

Gunsmithing done, still retching, he crawled deeper to latch onto the wolf's greasy tail, hauled the heavy body and two muskets, Opechee's and Macintosh's, backwards.

Outside, the wolf bore no trace of its former magnificence, just lay like a gritty fleece daubed with scarlet. Joseph muttered, "`No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.'" Rob Macintosh snatched his dirty musket and set to reloading.

Joseph hunched over and hacked his lungs clear. A villager bent to chop off the wolf's head, a trophy be to nailed above the meetinghouse door, but Joseph slapped his hand away. The colonists expected "the daft bugger" to slice off the wolf's tail. Instead, the student slit the wolf's belly, hauled out the stomach and intestines, split them, dug through slime with his bare hands. Men recoiled from the stench until Joseph gave a shout.

"Here! See?" Deaf, Joseph yelled, his breath blowing frost. He wiped something on his shirt, held it up.

A musket ball.

"Witness I used only buckshot to kill this wolf! I even discharged Mister Macintosh's gun to assure there were no musket balls! Now I've hunted inside this wolf's guts and found a musket ball! I didn't fire it into his carcass, so how did it get there?"

A ring of puzzled faces.

"This wolf swallowed this ball when it was lodged in the heart and lungs of Elias Somers! So this ball killed Somers, no?"

More puzzlement, but Paul nodded to go on.

Joseph picked up the grimy Indian gun, held the musket ball to the bore: too big by an eighth of an inch. "A French-model musket is a smaller caliber than an English gun! Thus we demonstrate this ball, that killed Somers, was not fired from Opechee's musket!"

Men looked up at a growl.

Face aflame with fury, Rob Macintosh levelled his long English gun at Joseph's belly and pulled the trigger.

The hammer clacked on the frizzen, but struck no spark.

Joseph stalked forward and grabbed the barrel. Raging, Macintosh racked back the hammer and snapped again, still lacked a spark. The student twisted the musket away. Macintosh whirled to run, but big Paul bowled him over.

Men slapped Joseph's back. Gradually voices filtered through the buzz in his ears. Paul nattered, "... brilliant! Fie, wait'll Anne gets a look at you! Like the walking dead! And stink! But that was some brave! Rob might've dropped you in your tracks!"

"No." Joseph cradled the woodsman's musket, plied his knife to unscrew the stone clamped in the hammer. "While in the cave I plucked out his flint and screwed in this soft shale instead. He was so quick to reload, he didn't notice. This gun wouldn't have sparked till Doomsday."

"But how did you know?"

"Hints and guesses," Joseph shrugged. "Old friends carry old grudges. With his temper, Macintosh could easily shoot a friend in the breast, especially drunk. `Anger is a short madness,' and he ran into the woods to hide. Had he confessed, citing a quarrel and self-defense, he might have been absolved. But when he saw an Indian among us, he framed a quick lie and shot the red man in cold blood."

Joseph's anger finally caught up with him. Ripping the bloody scalp from Macintosh's belt, he slapped the man's face with it. "I'll bury this with our dead friend. Brother Wolf had not the rapacity of this rascal. 'Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, for inwardly they are ravening wolves...'"

END



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