Bad Men

Crow despised the Europeans. He knew that more would come, and St.-Castin’s marriage to his sister represented the beginning of the dilution of the old ways. Already, there was less game to hunt, and great numbers of his people were dying in strange, unfamiliar ways, taken by invisible ailments that had never existed before the coming of the whites. Gluskap, the great creator of the Maine natives, had fled when he sensed the coming of the Europeans, abandoning them to their fate. Crow believed that Gluskap would never return as long as Wabanaki dwelt with the Europeans, giving to them their women and protecting them from their enemies. Through the White Leader, Crow was able to strike back at the hated French and English, but by the time of the raid on Sanctuary, he knew that the uneasy alliance was drawing to an end, and that the hour would come when the White Leader’s musket would be used upon his guide.

So Crow turned his back to the sea, and headed for the wilderness to the west, not knowing that three new names had been added to the list of those who hunted him.

The three hunters, the last living remnants of the settlement on Sanctuary, searched for their prey without rest, and, once found, disposed of them without mercy.

It took them four years.

The names and descriptions of the men whom they sought had been obtained from the English in Portland, who had tortured their captive, a man named Mundy, until he informed on his companions. They were aided in their aims by the reluctance of the perpetrators to leave for long the northeastern territories familiar to them, and in which they had families and allies who might give them succor.

The first they killed in Wells, as he tried to make his way south to establish contact with his brother, who lived near Fort William amp; Mary. Two died at Winter Harbor, fleeing the Indian raid on the settlement and falling instead to the knives of the hunters. As Queen Anne’s War raged around them, they hanged one at Norridgewock, taken as he and two fellow cutthroats shadowed the Hilton expedition in the hope of stealing supplies. They tracked another north through Acadia, eventually confronting him by the shores of the Northumberland Strait, and as he pleaded for mercy they drowned him in the icy waters.