The Revenge of Joe Wild by Andrew Komarnyckyj

Author:Andrew Komarnyckyj
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Santa Monica Press

14.

CAPTURED, TIED UP, AND TORTURED

I ain’t never been so affrighted in my life as I was when I went back to the camp and saw it was empty. Figuring Billy had been caught and taken away, I got guilty because it was my fault for not looking after him. I should’ve found a way of keeping him safe. Should never have stopped in one place for so long. When had he been taken? The fire had burnt down low. It was no more’n a pile of glowing embers, which told me Billy had been gone a while. If he’d been around he woulda kept wood piled on the fire to keep it good and strong. Where did that leave me? It left me with the task of freeing him if I could and getting myself kilt in the attempt if I couldn’t.

Looked around for his tracks. There they was, plain as day. Billy warn’t light of foot in the way me and Pa was. He’d left his mark on the forest floor. No other tracks to be found, though. What had happened? Had something spooked him making him run off? A tracker dog maybe? A white man with a gun? Or a wild animal like a hog or something? But this was no time for speculatin’. Billy had a head start on me, and I had to find him. Dropping the fish I lit out after Billy, following his tracks as good as any sniffer dog. I ran. I had to, to be sure of catching up with him before anything bad happened to him.

While I was running I warn’t looking at anything but his tracks and I warn’t listening out for anything. I was just hell-bent on the one thing: finding Billy. Well, I ain’t gone but a couple of hundred yards when I heard something in spite of not listening. Footsteps loud as you like coming at me from the side. Turned my head and saw a man about six foot tall aged maybe twenty-five with black hair and a beard. He was carrying a musket and seemed to be a trapper type. Probably made his living by trading furs. Good in the woods but not so good as me. He had a scarred cheek which told me he’d likely been in a knife-fight, eyes burning like coals, and a face on him mean as a diamondback. He was as hell-bent on getting me as I was on getting Billy. I turned and headed away from him and put a real spurt on, but he was bigger’n me and a whole lot quicker. I heard him coming up behind me. A growed man will generally beat a boy in a fight or in a race. I zig-zagged to throw him off, because one thing I knowed I’d be better at than him was turning a tight corner. That kept me out of harm’s way for about ten seconds before he threw down his musket, and I felt his weight on me and tumbled to the deck.

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