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The Return (Northkill Amish Series #2)

By Bob Hostetler, J. M. Hochstetler

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Chapter 1

Wednesday, October 12, 1757

This time they would be given no reprieve as at Shikellamy’s Town.

Jakob Hochstetler looked fearfully around as a deafening roar filled the air. The milling prisoners were being prodded between two lines of jubilant tormentors.

He shoved his fingers through his sweat-drenched black hair, three-weeks’ growth since the morning his captors had shorn his head and carried him and his two youngest sons far from Northkill Creek and their ruined plantation, leaving behind the scalped bodies of his wife, older son, and baby daughter. Moments earlier, his party had been driven across a small tributary that formed the northwest boundary of a broad, arrow-shaped point of land. It was bordered on the northeast by swift-flowing Buxotons Creek and along the southeast by a wide waterway the Iroquois called Ohi:'i:o`, the beautiful river.

The ancient Mingo-Seneca castle of Buckaloons sprawled across this point, its weathered, palisaded walls rising nine feet high. From its gates spilled a roiling tide composed of many tribes, with French traders and trappers jostling among them. Brilliantly painted men, women, and children danced in fierce anticipation to the pounding beat of drums, waving knotted clubs, thorny brambles, rocks, handfuls of stones and dirt, any weapon that came to hand. Already a double-rowed gauntlet was forming, winding from the gates between rows of bark-clad longhouses, wigewas, and log cabins all the way to the great council house at what appeared to be the town’s center.

Jakob threw a despairing glance at his friend Hans Specht, who stumbled against him in the press of the panicked captives, sweat stinging his eyes in spite of the cool breeze. “Can you understand anything they say?”
Specht shook his head wearily and shouted back over the din. “The Seneca tongue is nothing like the Delaware’s.”

It was near sundown of that sunny day, the third since those brought to the French fort at Presque Isle by Indian raiders had been parceled out to representatives of the various tribes. Three days since fifteen-year-old Joseph and eleven-year-old Christian had been ripped from Jakob’s arms. All along the bitter path angling southeast, the joyous autumn colors that set the woods to flame had silently mocked the mournful company to which Jakob belonged.

The surge of prisoners jolted another man into them. He muttered an apology, then added, eyes wild, “Run fast as you can! Our only chance is to make it to the council house. They’ll kill any that fall. God help the young’uns!”
Anguished cries arose from the captives at the rear, where the company’s guards had begun to beat those who hesitated. The man was thrust roughly past Jakob and Specht.

Fifteen were left of the nineteen who had begun that desperate journey. Those unable to keep up or who had fallen along the way had been summarily dispatched with a tomahawk blow, scalped, their bodies left sprawled along the path.

One had been the man who confided to Specht that he had seen Specht’s young children, Franz and Hannah, in a party being taken away by a chief named Custaloga. And that one of Jakob’s boys had been with them. That was all Specht had been able to learn before the man had met his end.

Jakob had determined to make it through whatever came, to escape and find a way to rescue his boys. All the way from Presque Isle, he had focused on putting one foot in front of the other. And as the company had continued to move southeast, he consoled himself with the knowledge that every mile brought him closer to home.

Now, however, courage failed. He reached out to clasp Specht’s hand, but the mass of captives shifted and the two were borne away from each other.
Jakob watched the women and children of their company being separated from the men and herded off to the side. They clutched one another, sobbing, while the men were prodded into a tight knot, with the younger men forced to the head of the gauntlet.

“Danke, Gott, that at least the women and children are spared,” he whispered.

The first man was thrust between the lines of villagers. Drums began to beat, and he ran, arms flailing, but within a few steps hunched over, covering his head as he tried to dodge the vicious blows directed at him. Each time a weapon connected, he howled, finally collapsed well short of the council house, his bloody form writhing. Wails rippled through the huddled captives when at last he lay motionless beneath the clubs.

One at a time, those ahead of Jakob were forced to run the gauntlet. Each made it to the end and collapsed inside the council house door, dazed and bleeding from multiple wounds.

When Jakob was dragged to the line’s head, he thought fleetingly of Specht, somewhere behind him, who had suffered more than he from the rigors of their long journey. And of his and Specht’s children, who might even now be facing their own torment.

Ach, lieber Herr, steh’ uns bei! Ah, dear Lord, stay by us!

The drums began once more to throb, and the warrior at Jakob’s side shoved him between the lines. He lowered his head and sprang forward, blotting all else from consciousness but the goal that lay before him.

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