Free The Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner

as a boy knew that. Not for nearly a hundred years since Royal Proclamation and Teedyuscung. But my grandfather and Henry Stands’s father had torn up British paper too. We followed the rivers and valleys that still had their Indian names. Mister Stands saw my fear.
    ‘They are just hungry, that’s all. They are the worst of them. Thems that stayed or were kicked away and became civilized like your Thomas Heywood. It is good that you have your hat and coat. In the fire they may not see you as what you are.’
    I was almost out of my body with fear but Henry Stands kept up our talk as if it was nothing. ‘Tomorrow we will go to Berwick. You may consider if you want to go on.’ He checked once to his gun belt, ax, and knife, and then gulped some rum and began to sing, tapping out a tune on his bottle, which you may know as a fife and drum for soldiers.
    ‘Then to the east we bore away
    To win a name in story
    And there where dawns the sun of day
    There dawned our sun of glory
    The place in my sight
    When in the host assigned me
    I shared the glory of that fight
    Sweet girl I left behind me.’
    He slugged again and chinked the bottle to the boiler in my hand.
    ‘Is it gone?’ It was the face over his shoulder that he meant. I spoke into the boiler at my lips.
    ‘Yes, sir.’ I did not know if this was good or bad.
    ‘So has the other,’ he said. ‘I must check my rifle. Stay here.’ He picked up his knife and went off into the dark to the horses. I sat and watched my hands trembling around the boiler in my grip, praying for his return. I thought of my home in New York, pictured the velvet curtains and the black-and-white-tiled hall. My mother’s coffin in the parlor, when I could not help but grin at all the attention put upon me.
    Henry Stands came back and sat down. ‘No harm. The horse would let me know, but you can never tell. You should sleep now.’
    Sleep?
I could no more sleep than I could walk to the moon, but I made the pretense. It was only when I went to lie on the ground that Henry Stands noted I had no bed.
    ‘God, boy! You are ill prepared!’ He made me drink some rum. ‘Keep your shoes on and take my roll and blanket. I will stay up. They may come back. They would have seen my guns.’
    ‘You could bring your rifle here,’ I suggested.
    ‘Then they would know I had seen them. Now set down. You may sleep. I will sleep some in the morning when you will make me tea. Nothing will happen while I sit here.’
    I lay down and watched him, the blanket about my face. He made a new pipe and had plenty of rum to see him through. I thought I had a dream of him cleaning his pistols and mumbling songs but I cannot tell that as true. I slept well with that giant sitting above and my father’s glasses against my breast. A quilt about me in the shadow of the valley.

ELEVEN
    At sunup I used the last of the canteens for tea for I was not about to go down to the stream alone. Mister Stands was asleep but I guess he had kept his vigil for he had draped his kerchief across his eyes and lay on his coat deep gone. I still had cheese and crackers and I spread these on the sack for breakfast and hoped mister Stands would share some of his jerky. I tried not to stir him, but my striking a new fire for the tea jumped him awake. He growled and rolled over in his coat but he could not complain if I was making him food. I burned myself again and again striking the fire and making the tea; everything about tea is always red-hot despite its reward.
    I put the mug near his face and he breathed it in. He sat up and drank it all and took my cheese and crackers without a word. He did not look like he enjoyed mornings but I put that down to the rum. He handed me the mug and I poured tea for myself.
    ‘Get some more water,’ he said. ‘I will feed the horses and get us ready.’
    I thought of asking him to come with me to the water but his face was not pleasant. I drank my tea carefully, as the enamel cup kept it hotter than