“Raven’s not one to trade in scalps,” she assured him with a confidence she was far from feeling. “He’s kin to Scotchie, remember.” Yet even as she said it she nearly choked on the words. The Indian agent was as much a scalp taker as the warriors he roused, was he not? Sending dire, bloody messages as a king’s man? Raven’s smidgen of white blood was no guarantee of peace.
Nate was studying her as if sensing her troubled spirit, so she busied herself redding up the camp, the dull thud of the hatchet an onerous backdrop. She didn’t have to turn around to witness who was besting who. It would be a draw between Sion and Raven no matter how long they sported.
“Why don’t we have us a little praise,” Nate was saying. “I lost my Bible when we took a tumble and first come over the Gap. But you have some Psalms, you said.”
“Did have.” Tempe shook out a saddle blanket. “Till I lent them to Mister Morgan.”
Nate’s brows peaked again. “And he ain’t give ’em back?” At her “nay,” a slow grin lit his face. “Well, I’ll be. Mebbe you’re on this here mission for more than your woods skills. If we was to find ourselves sorely tested, to the point of . . . um . . . expiration, I’d rest a heap easier knowing we’re headed in the same direction, Sion and I.”
“You believe in heaven, Mister Stoner?”
“More than I believe in here, aye.”
She smoothed a corner of the folded blanket. “Out here in the quiet heaven seems near, nearer than the inn where it’s all bustle and noise.”
“You can hear the Almighty speak in the silences, you mean. See His hand most clear. I believe so too, but you got to want to see Him. Hear Him.” He looked toward the hatchet throwers. “Not turn a blind eye and ride right over what He’s put in your path, nor try to outrun Him. Mebbe it’s up to you and me to slow some folks down so they get quiet enough to hear Him.”
“That’s a hard-sounding task.” She took a seat, her back to the men. “Something’s driving your Mister Morgan, you mean.”
“Nothing that the Almighty can’t cure.”
She waited, ready to take in whatever crumbs might be shared regarding Sion, but impatience flared at Nate’s sudden silence. Her longing to know more loosed her tongue. “Mister Morgan tells me Mister Lyon is kin by marriage.”
Nate nodded, sipping his coffee. “On account of Harper, you mean.”
Harper? Her heart flipped. A pretty name if there ever was one. She swallowed down the hunger to know more. Nate was regarding her as if her belly growled and exposed her.
“Aye, Harper Lyon Morgan.” Raising a hand, he dried the sweat beading his upper lip. “But that’s Sion’s story to tell.”
And Harper? What would she say herself? Back at Fort Henry, or wherever she was, Harper waited for a man in buckskins, an obstinate surveyor, to finish his rambles and return to her.
If she was Harper . . . Tempe’s hands curled round the log on which she sat, nails biting deep into the hickory’s shaggy bark. She forced the thought to a finish.
If she was Harper she’d never let such a one go, just as she shouldn’t have let James go at the last. A thousand times in her mind’s eye she’d taken back the day, rearranged it to suit her fancy and spare herself the heartache.
She dared another question. “Any least’uns?”
For a moment Nate’s faded eyes turned a watery gray. “There was a one, aye.”
Tempe lowered her gaze. A man-child? Or a girl? Gone like a breath, then. Never to be seen or touched again shy of eternity. She studied her moccasins, one in need of mending.
Nate’s words when they came were soft. “You’re speaking out of your own need, your own loss.”
Was she? She seldom mentioned James. Maybe she could confide in Nate, a man whose hurts didn’t seem to hinder him but turned him rich and reflective instead.
“You and Sion ain’t so unlikely a pair. You could learn something from the other. Turn all this wilderness wanderin’ into a promised land.”
She smiled through her sadness. She liked this old man. Not so old, truly. Just in sore need of a razor and a comb to tame the pewter strands in his hair.
Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. “Let’s have us a word to honor the day.”
She bowed her head. The hatchet throwing ceased. Birdsong and a trifling breeze were all that were heard and felt. Had the men paused out of respect? She daren’t look up and find out. It was a hallowed, holy moment, made more so by the earnestness in Nate’s gravelly voice.
“Wherein we have done amiss, we humbly crave Thy forgiveness, O Father in heaven. Draw near to us now and overshadow us with Thy great goodness, for Jesus’s sake. Amen.”
She tried to be still, to sink herself into the words, the wonder. For a few moments the heaviness of Powell Valley lessened. The journey ahead of them loomed large, but there was a sweetness woven within, a thread of promise and discovery.
Lord, let it be.
18
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.
—WILLA CATHER
The woods were putting on a show, distractions at every turn. A fetching blossom. A dislodged bird’s nest. A berry bush. Sion tamped down his impatience, equally snagged by Tempe’s movements. She’d even found a parakeet’s feather and worked the plume into the band of her hat, a burst of lime green amid the black felt—another distraction. He opened his mouth to caution her, but sensing what was coming, she plucked it free. She clutched the colorful feather in a grimy fist.
Raven was leading, she and Sion just behind. Rather than bring all their party, the three of them decamped at dawn on foot, bent on backtracking after locating a suitable survey site. Finding it, Sion sank his hatchet deep into the biggest elm, itching to begin but unable to go farther without his chain carriers and equipment.
Horses tiring, they began retreating. They’d entered a glade knee-high in peavine. It was there that Raven tossed up a cautionary hand, bringing his mount to a standstill. Through the endless chanting of cicadas came the barest indication of movement. Sliding off his horse, Raven crouched behind a bank of brush, and Sion and Tempe quickly followed, leaving their horses, on the razor’s edge of fear lest their mounts give out a fatal nicker.
Past a screen of leafy green Sion peered, aware of Tempe on her knees beside him, her chin tucked low, eyes closed as if locked in silent prayer. Beside her, Raven’s wary features sent a message that chilled Sion to the marrow. He blinked, sweat staining his temples, the sunlight near blinding where it cut through the trees like a golden scythe. When it faded behind a cloud, his vision sharpened.
Just below, a line of Indians made a near-silent passage along a creek bank, the very watercourse they themselves had followed at dawn, wading to better hide their presence.
The lead brave—nearly naked save for loincloth and leggings, his tuft of charcoal hair befeathered, neck and forearms flashing silver—was painted for war. Black and red ochre smeared the Indians’ lean, muscled bodies. Not a one wore the white of peace or mourning.
Sion had slipped his rifle out of its saddle holster on his way to the forest floor. Annie was primed and loaded. Tempe’s small, callused hand encircled her gun barrel, the butt of it on the ground. He was glad to the heart she was an able shot. Raven, deadly with a hatchet as he’d proved in yesterday’s Sabbath challenge, was equally intimidating with bow and arrow.
The braves were pausing now, their attention fixed on the ground. By heaven, had he and Tempe left any earlier sign? The beating of his heart seemed outside his chest. He’d had Russell unshod Beck before leaving the inn. Now the horses were blessedly quiet, sated on clover from a brief rest, hides aquiver and tails noiselessly swishing against the ever-present insects.
Yet anything might change in a heartbeat.
He waited for that first chilling whoop, that deep guttural cry sounded by the lead scout that told them the enemy had been sighted . . . or perhaps exposed by Raven himself. Sion
stemmed the traitorous thought with effort, but the suspicion remained. How many in this party were known to the half-blood?
His mind turned another fearful corner. He rarely let himself linger on that bloody day three years past. It was always like an echo in his conscience, muted by day but loudest in the long, silent nights. This was how it had been that final, fatal afternoon—the unsuspecting intrusion, the fatal pounce. His own life, his mistakes, seemed to parade themselves through his tautly stretched thoughts.
A slight movement to his left brought him round. Tempe looked up, took in the war party below, her lovely face calm. Nay, haunted.
He wanted to reach out and shield her as he’d been unable to do when his whole world was torn asunder. It hadn’t righted yet. It might never. All his wilderness wandering had taken him far from the tragedy, but somehow the tragedy had followed. He swallowed back the bile the memory always wrought. He focused. Fixed his hate.
Raven seemed cast in stone, frozen by that uncanny stealth that few white men, ever twitchy, seemed to master. The war party finished their searching and with silent looks communicated it was time to continue on. They swept upward and away from the creek bed onto higher ground.
Straight toward the surveyors’ camp.
Like a bird flushed from a bush, Tempe passed Sion her gun and lit out, still half crouched. She was quick, ever so quick. Words of caution gathered and died in Sion’s throat. He gauged Raven’s reaction, startled to see his half smile.
Sion could vouch for her being fleet of foot. The day she’d led him on a chase through the woods was never far from his thoughts. Bold she’d been, giving him a hint of her courage. If anyone could run undetected through the wilds, it was she.
Raven moved next, a flick of his fingers indicating they were to follow the war party. They hobbled the horses in a patch of clover and matched their pace to the Indians’, beginning a precarious pursuit. One wrong move, the slightest sound, would mean the Indians descending on them like a host of yellow jackets. Or . . .
Sion tried to dislodge the other unsavory possibility. They might detect Tempe even before she reached the camp. Depending on their mood, they’d either kill her outright or take her captive. Death was often the better choice.
Either prospect taunted him. He felt a-simmer, his energy renewed as he kept to Raven’s heels. As the sun tilted west and baked the woods brown as bread, Sion fought for breath. Parched, cramped, he kept on. Somehow, despite carrying Tempe’s rifle and his, he managed to extract a ginseng root from his budget, bit it in two, and passed half to Raven.
The half-blood’s eyes communicated gratitude, though ginseng was hardly needed. Raven was a marvel of endurance. There was precious little time to pause. To think. Keeping moving consumed Sion, his gaze never leaving the line of Indians, the rear scout sometimes swinging round like a weather vane as if he detected them.
God, help. Help Tempe.
But for her name, it was nearly the same prayer he’d prayed for Harper.
To no avail.
Tempe’s every step was a silent prayer, words enough to fill the wilderness. In half a mile she’d gained on the war party and in another half had outdistanced them altogether. Off the trail on the ridge above them were frightful risks. The woods were dry again. Bone dry. If a twig snapped beneath her feet or a leaf rustled, might the Indians think her a deer?
When the rockhouse came into view she could hear Cornelius.
Singing.
Had he nary a care for where he was? A bawdy song spilled from his lips. For the moment “Let’s Be Jovial, Fill Our Glasses” resounded through the woods, when it was a hymn she craved. Something befitting the moment, like “Lord, Be Thou Merciful.”
Lucian was the first to see her though she had long since seen and heard them. Their camp proclaimed it washday. Cornelius’s red handkerchief hung in brazen defiance of Sion’s everlasting caution. It was the first thing Tempe snatched, stuffing it out of sight down her bodice beneath her stays. She scoured the bushes clean of men’s smallclothes, nearly mowing Hascal down in her haste. Where was Spencer?
Wordless, she looked at Nate and Cornelius and thrust a hand back, hoping the frantic gesture conveyed what she could not say. Into the rockhouse. Without so much as a whimper. Cornelius’s mouth opened, but her dagger’s glance cut off any questions. Lungs crying for air, she couldn’t talk if she wanted to. She herself was a mess, hairline wet beneath her hat brim, eyes burning with salty sweat.
Lucian began rounding up stray items. A wash kettle by the creek. Lye soap. A beater. Nate was stamping out the fire that Sion had forbidden, throwing handfuls of dirt to smother the flames. She couldn’t account for the axemen. Were they with the horses? It was Cornelius who first scrambled up the cliff’s scrubby side to the rockhouse, Lucian close behind. Tempe was next since Nate stubbornly held his ground, spurred by some gentlemanly courtesy she couldn’t fathom.
She recalled the prayer he’d prayed. Was it just yesterday? He’d asked for a hedge about them. Peace. Maybe this was his answer. She herded the men to the back of the rockhouse and crept back to the ledge, belly flat against the rough stone as she lay prostrate and looked out, Nate’s loaded rifle alongside her.
In the span of a few more ragged breaths the war party appeared, single file and no less fierce than at first. Her chest heaved, her breath frozen in place. On the belt of the lead scout dangled two scalps.
Nay . . . oh, nay.
Dropping her head, she swiped sweat from stinging eyes before studying that dangling hair. One scalp flaxen. So like James’s. Another a pleasing russet no longer. Not Raven’s. Not Sion’s.
One of the warriors left the column. Riveted, Tempe watched his every move, mesmerized by all his silver. He came nearer their abandoned washing, the doused fire and tumbled kettle in the brush.
Lord, have mercy.
The scent of wood smoke lingered. She wanted to kick Cornelius. No doubt he had deemed it washday. His fussy habits would be the death of him.
Catlike, the warrior crept closer, so close she could see the hammered indentions in his necklace and the bangles about his arms.
Her breath held tight in her lungs. She daren’t twitch. Death was but a few steps away. If she was of a mind, she could draw a bead on the Indian’s tawny chest. But that would bring the other warriors down on them, and what good was Cornelius cowering in the back of the rockhouse? She’d have a furious fight on her hands with only Lucian and Nate for help.
She nearly groaned when the warrior knelt and examined the hastily extinguished fire. The warrior’s wary gaze swept upward, to the mouth of the rockhouse.
Their only hope was heaven itself.
But heaven, she remembered, had stayed silent for James. Would her life end the same way? Was she truly ready to die? Her one solace was that Sion wasn’t present. And Raven. Both men were safe, or so she hoped . . .
Straightening to his full height, the Indian paused for a brief moment before backtracking. With his every step away from them, Tempe’s own breathing eased. He rejoined his party, befuddling her.
Weak as water, Tempe let the ledge cradle her till they’d passed out of sight, counting to one hundred before drinking from the canteen strung around her neck. Emptying it, eyes never leaving the woods, she gained some relief.
Nate had dropped down beside her, lowering his old bones to ask one worrisome question. “Sion and your Indian fella all right?”
“I don’t know any better than you,” she whispered back.
Her anguished mind played out one scenario after another. Both men tomahawked, the horses taken. Raven turning on Sion and joining the war party.
Nay. She wouldn’t think less of Raven.
Below, rustling in the brush, Hascal returned with Spencer. Whey-faced. Shaken. The both of them darting furtive glances at the rockhouse and then the trail the Indians had taken. She motioned them up, wondering where they’d been but unwilling to risk any talk. Sometimes an Indian doubled back . . .
r /> Scrambling upward, clutching brush and rock to gain a hand- or toehold, they came over the ledge and nearly ran to the back of the rockhouse. She wouldn’t risk so much as a chuckle, though relief bubbled up inside her like a newfound spring.
Nate’s whisper, riddled with thankfulness, captured her attention. “There they be.”
Sion approached in the brush just below while Raven continued on, no doubt to discover just where the war party was headed.
Another fear flared. Unless the Indians changed course and forded the river, the inn lay directly in their path. A thick resignation took hold, overriding any gladness.
Sion entered the rockhouse, stared at the wad of clean clothes she’d tossed along one rock wall, then sank down on the other side of her. Wedged between him and Nate, she suddenly felt as safe as if she stood behind a fort’s pickets.
Her mind veered to Raven again, but Sion quickly claimed her next thought. She could feel the heft and strength of him this close, smell the exertion the summer’s heat always wrought. His hat was off, his chiseled features plain. Whiskers stubbled his jaw, a shade lighter than his shaggy mane. The woods claimed his attention, his gaze never settling.
For all the notice he paid her, she might have been one of the axemen. She hoped he was more attentive to Harper. The mystery of their marital tie consumed her. She misdoubted Harper Lyon Morgan would be lying here on jagged rock, sweaty and stinking and disheveled. Tem Tucker was no better than the men.
She shrank inside herself, wishing she could be as small as the spider working its way along the rock floor. For some reason she’d packed her marrying dress. Her hope had been that they’d make it to a fort. There she’d shed her woods garb and make herself presentable again. Fort frolics were known far and wide for their revelry, full of feasting and dancing come a marrying or a holiday. Could Sion dance? Could Nate? Cornelius likely outshone them both.
Disgusted, she bent her thoughts to the danger at hand. For what seemed an eternity they stayed flat on their bellies, till Raven returned near dusk. Hardly winded, he scaled the cliff face effortlessly, his terse words unwelcome but hardly surprising. “They go to make war on the settlements. Boone’s Fort.”