Red Prophet Page 0,87
"Measure, I love you, but I can't go." Still crying, he ran down the dune. Not wanting to watch him out of sight, Measure started walking. Almost due south, a little bit east. He wouldn't have no trouble finding the way. But he felt sick with dread, and with shame for having let them talk him into leaving without his brother. I failed at everything here. I'm pretty near useless.
He walked the rest of that day and spent the night in a pile of leaves in a hollow. Next day he walked till late afternoon, when he came to a south-flowing creek. It would flow into the Tippy-Canoe or the Wobbish, one or the other. It was too deep to walk down the middle, and too overgrown to walk alongside. So he just kept the stream within earshot and made his own way through the forest. He wasn't no Red, that was for sure. He got scratched up by bushes and branches and bit by insects, none of which felt too good on his sunburnt skin. He also kept running into thickets and having to back out. Like the land was his enemy, slowing him down. He kept wishing for a horse and a good road.
Hard as it was to go through the woods, though, he was up to it. Partly cause Alvin toughened up his feet for him. Partly cause of the way he seemed to breathe deeper than ever before. But it was more than that. Strength was wound in among his muscles in a way he never felt in his life. Never so alive as now. And he thought, If I had a horse right now, I think maybe I'd be wishing I was on foot.
It was late afternoon on the second day when he heard a splashing sound in the river. There was no mistaking it - horses were being walked in the stream. That meant White men, maybe even folks from Vigor Church, still searching for him and Alvin.
He scrambled his way to the Stream, getting scratched something awful on the way. They were headed downstrewn, away from him, four men on horseback. It wasn't till he was already out into the stream, yelling to bust his head off that he noticed they were wearing the green uniform of the U.S. Army. He never heard of them coming up in these parts. This was the country where White folks didn't go much, on account of not wanting to rile up the French at Fort Chicago.
They heard him right off, and wheeled their horses around to see him. Almost quick as they saw him, three of them had their muskets up to the ready.
"Don't shoot!" Measure cried.
The soldiers rode toward him, making pretty slow progress as their horses had some trouble breasting the water.
"Don't shoot, for heaven's sake," Measure said. "You can see I ain't armed, I don't even have a knife."
"He talks English real good, don't he?" said one soldier to another.
"Of course I do! I'm a White main."
"Now don't that beat all," said another soldier. "First time I ever heard one of them claim to be White."
Measure looked down at his own skin. It was a vivid red color from his sunburn, much lighter than any true Red man. He was wearing a loincloth, and he looked pretty wild and dirty. But his beard was growing somewhat, wasn't it? For the first time Measure found himself wishing he was a hairy man, with thick heavy beard and lots of chest hair. Then there'd be no mistake, since Reds didn't grow much. As it was, though, they wouldn't see his light-colored mustache hair or the few little hairs on his chin till they were up cIdse.
And they weren't taking no chances, either. Only one rode right up to him. The others hung back, their muskets out, ready to open fire in case Measure had some boys lying in ambush on the riverbank. He could see that the man riding toward him was plumb scared to death, looking this way and that, waiting to see a Red man flitch an arrow at him. Kind of an idiot, Measure decided, since there wasn't no chance of seeing a Red man in the woods till his arrow was already in you.
The soldier didn't come right to him. He circled around, got beside him. Then he looped a rope and tossed it to Measure. "You hitch this around your chest, under your arms," said the soldier.
"What for?"
"So I