Free The Ransom of Mercy Carter by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

ran between two lines of Indians who clubbed and beat him. Anybody in the Indian village who had not gone to war participated in the gauntlet. It was their job to hit hard enough to avenge the dead. A captive might reach the end of the gauntlet and he might not. The Indians didn’t care.
    Eben wondered about his courage. Could he stay on his feet and endure the blows? Or would he be another Jemima and give up?
    I N THE MORNING , they divided what was left of the meat—not much—and marched another mile. Every step, they could hear wolves howling, and Eben was afraid and also surprised. Wolves did not normally gather in packs as large as this must be. Nor did they usually howl so much by day.
    The English bunched together, keeping close to the Indians. The Indians were armed, but would they protect their captives from wolves or just laugh if stragglers fell?
    The mothers who were still alive (ten killed so far on the trail, by Eben’s count, never mind the ones killed in Deerfield) were uniformly exhausted. They were used to labor every day of their lives. But they were not used to marching, and almost all had had babies recently. They lacked the strength for the grim pace and the Indians lacked interest in helping them.
    If you were near your mother, or anybody else’s mother, you had to be prepared to witness her death, and no one could ever be prepared for that. So the children avoided their mothers. Today, appalled by the new threat of wolves, mothers tried to summon their children, but the children did not come.
    They burst out of thick woods to find what could only be the Connecticut River. Low banks edged a frozen expanse that formed a smooth road north.
    Eben would have loved to farm here. Even hidden by snow, this was beautiful country; it was a sin for this land to lie vacant. God expected men to use their talents, not bury them, and He expected land to be used, not buried beneath trees. Every field of corn, every fence and gate, every ax against a tree: These turned wilderness into England.
    Eben plotted the English town that would rise here, seeing property lines stretching down to the water, choosing the low hill on which a meetinghouse would be built.
    At the river’s edge waited another whole band of Indians, surrounded by yapping dogs and empty sledges. It had not been wolves howling at all, but sled dogs.
    It was as amazing as the twenty frozen moose. The planning that had gone into this journey! Eben felt there must be some strategy here; some background to the attack on Deerfield that he could not yet understand.
    If the attack had been meant to keep the English from taking more wilderness, surely the destruction of Deerfield was enough. But maybe not. Maybe the true horror for Massachusetts would be lost children. Maybe it was children the Indians wanted.
    But then why bring all these adults?
    Perhaps so the Indians could litter the path with bodies, like words on a page spelling,
Get out! Leave our land!
    Then why bother with moccasins and moose meat?
    Had the Indians anticipated riches and wealth? And so the sleds were not for carrying children but for carrying gold and fine guns and silver plate? But nobody in Deerfield was rich. You went to the frontier because you were poor, not because you were rich. Surely the French would have known that.
    “Munnonock,” said Mercy’s Indian.
    Eben did not know the word or any of the syllables in it.
    Mercy frowned, trying to work it out. She shook her head at Tannhahorens.
    He pointed at her. “Munnonock,” he said again. His voice lingered on the m’s and n’s, humming like a bee, and then, hand on his chest, he repeated his name, “Tannhahorens,” and pointed at Mercy. “Munnonock.”
    Mercy had been given an Indian name.
    Eben shivered. Names had power. It occurred to him that the real name of this eleven-year-old had a terrible power: Mercy. The Indians might show mercy to her and she, in turn, might show mercy to them.
    Ruth said sharply, “Do