Snow now crowned the ship gunwales that served as battlements, over which sailors and hunters peered. One yelled, “I see one, darting, like a shadow. A baldy, a chief, comes trudging—a hard savage, big and bear-cloaked.”

Rawlings, the hide-monger, fairly leaped across the snow-covered plaza past the milling Susquehanna warriors, who had gathered around their chiefs.

The big man under his heaped furs, dripping tobacco juice from his mouth, a plug of which he crudely chewed, slobbered, “Guvner, those Devil Dogs are the enemy of these here ones—each kind having whittled the other down to ripe size. They could not abide the same master, though each needs one. This lot here is more agreeable by far, though the other shew more heart and are half-breeds, mongrel sons of heathen en runaway rogue.”

“Please, Captain Rawlings, if you might remain and stand by my side in the event counsel is required concerning the heathen parties.”

“Aye, Guvner,” spat the fur monger after his burly fashion.

The gate creaked, snow fell from its heavy oaken top, as one hunter brought down the beam and leaned it against the gallows and two men each pushed open the heavy ships timbers on moaning hinges. As the gate opened wide and the men, two to each side, charged their muskets and held them at the ready, the wide white blanket that covered the fallow ground was framed against the gray bulk of a wood so dense, with tree boles so massive, that form this distance, in winter, it seemed a grey wall beneath grey sky, where bare branches waved like clattering elk horns in the cutting breeze even as all was kissed by the softly falling snow.

A figure, with a red-painted, bald head and a black-painted face, wearing a black bear-hide draped over shoulders that seemed unnaturally broad, walked on skin-shod feet, with impressively thick legs toward them—toward his post, toward him, toward Governor General of Port Drake, Pendleton Shaw. Bouncing along at a fast march, though he gave the impression of a languid effort, the heathen’s loincloth was his only garment other than the bear-hide. He also carried a sword, a great, ancient claymore, held by the heavy scabbard a hand below the hilt. Arrogance exuded from the figure as he walked fearlessly into the gaping maw of their fort. As he passed the men at the gate he appeared slightly taller than most, not a man of great height, standing a few inches short of Hempstead’s considerable height.

Pendleton immediately thought of Jay Bracken, of that savage Scott, contentedly marooned upon these savage shores and thought for certain that he gazed upon one of his clansmen, if not a son. The fanciful atlas of his mind had long been occupied with mapping the interior of this land, based on the few reports by fur-mongers and explorers. It was known that the Spanish treasure borne by Don Enrique’s fleet had been looted by the heathens, that the fortune of twenty galleons lay somewhere in these bleak hinterlands. Wonderment ran him through as he envisioned a tribe of savages ruled by a Scottish king from some dark mountain keep, and of he, in command of a civilizing expedition, cannonading the gates and gaining a fortune to hire the men needed to build Port Drake into the Jewel of the New World.

The heathen un-shouldered his bear cloak and draped it over the two shivering boys locked in the stocks, standing nearly naked in the snow, his body torn from some wicked strife, fresh staunched wounds apparent, and a painfully swollen jaw hinged at an unnatural angle, above which a mouth with lips angled and teeth splintered on one side seemed to promise a less then verbose parlay.

The man placed the point of his sword scabbard on the frozen ground and leaned on the crosspiece nonchalantly, nodding to Rawlings, and then to Pendleton. To Moon Dog he spared a wicked sneer and one evil eye.

Pendleton spoke, “Your name, chief of the Devil Dogs, and your purpose.”

The mouth moved awkwardly and the deep voice rumbled out of the broad, scared, hair-matted chest, so odd for an Indian, so marking the man more white than red, “Hush, of The Sons of Fierce Woman—come to kill these dogs. My warriors surround your village, will come over the walls at night.”

Moon Dog hissed a curse in some Indian language as his men backed him in a tight formation, bows slung over their backs, war clubs and tomahawks ready in their hands.

Pendleton measured the man, secretly admiring his cause, obviously being a kinsman of the savage who had befriended him a lifetime ago. “You may not harm my Susquehanna guests.”

The man’s eyes fairly smoldered with hate, “I fight Moon Dog. After he dies I serve you.”

“What service might you render, Chief Hush,” queried Pendleton?”

“I will carry Moon Dog’s head before you to the Seven Towns of the Moon, where the Cherokee keep the tears of the sun and the tears of the moon—you will be rich, will have all the shinny things that the Whiteman desires.”

Pendleton’s head swam, “And for this, you ask only a duel with this man, who has pledged his people to my service?”

The man stammered hideously, “My people shall serve you.”

Pendleton looked to Moon Dog whose face was drawn in awful hate and the chief, snarled, “I will eat his hairy heart!”

Pendleton was swept away by the spirit of these two savages and nodded his assent, to which Rawlings rumbled cynically, “Praise the heathen mess about to be made.”

The sound of the bar being dropped across the gate animated the entire company as the warriors stepped back and the two chiefs stepped forward.

Pendleton was momentarily stricken with a morbid vision of himself as Lucifer, cracking the work whip in the very pits of Hell, and it sickened him.