She stood, her slim shadow cutting across Raven’s dusky figure as he lay vulnerable and exposed on the unforgiving ground. His bare chest rose and fell in shuddering waves, his sinewy right leg tensed so tight every cord and fiber bulged above the trap’s iron teeth.
She choked out a breathless command. “Pray to God I can get you sprung.”
His lips were moving, making her wonder. Was the Cherokee god her God? Raven spoke English, Russell said. She caught a few strained words.
“Free . . . me.”
She swallowed, the bile backing up in her throat. “Give me your hand.”
Dark fingers shot out, cool and firm. She held on to him for balance, placing her feet over the trap’s jaws and pushing down with her weight. The contraption creaked and gave way but slightly, not enough to free him but unleashing another spasm of pain.
Breathless with dismay, she startled when he gritted his teeth and swung his body nearer the trap. With his free hand he pressed downward on the jaws alongside her feet, throwing both his weight and hers behind the effort. Together, tethered hand and foot, they felt the trap give way. At last the bloody teeth released his tortured limb. He lay back spent as she flung the offender into the brush.
Dropping to her knees again, she removed his moccasin and began examining the torn flesh. If he hadn’t cried out . . . If she hadn’t come . . .
“Stay still,” she told him. She felt his eyes on her as she ran off, fleet as a deer, toward a rushing creek. There, she tore off the hem of her petticoat and plunged it into the cold water, not bothering to wring it out.
Returning to him, she smoothed the blood away, wishing for some of Aylee’s herbs. His coppery skin disguised the worst of it, but the gashes went deep. Bruising and swelling would follow, maybe blood poisoning. She prayed not.
“Keep the wound clean with comfrey or witch hazel. It’ll knit your skin back together.” She looked up and found understanding in his gaze. Tearing free more of her petticoat, she began wrapping the foot as best she could, forcing her next words past her reluctance. “Best come to the inn and lodge with Russell whilst you mend.”
Could he even walk? As if in answer to her unspoken question, he got to his feet with none of the grace of before. The makeshift bandage was already dark with blood and in need of replacing. Without thinking, she untied the string of her petticoat and let it fall to the ground beneath her shortgown.
“You need it worse than me.” Fighting immodesty, she gathered her remaining garment around her even as she held out the petticoat to him.
He took it, clutching it beneath one silver-banded arm, the glint of the metal catching the setting sun. Without a word in either Cherokee or English, he gathered his remaining dignity and began a slow walk away in the direction that he’d come. Toward home? She didn’t even know where he lived. She’d heard he wintered with the Chickamauga but roamed other times.
Feeling weak-legged herself, she forgot about Fairy Rock. As Raven limped away, the meadow changed, resuming its pleasant, peaceful lines. Her thoughts swung from the half-blood to James. She examined her heart for the slightest stain of hate.
She couldn’t shut her mind to the notion that the Boones had been hospitable to at least one of the Indians who’d killed James. Though several Cherokee had been pursued and punished by British authorities, one named Big Jim, a Shawnee, had eluded capture. He was later found in possession of some books and farming tools carried by James’s party.
Relief and resistance warred inside her. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. Despite her feelings, how glad she was to have done a righteous thing. The trap might well have ensnared her instead. Would Raven have heeded her cry?
Or left her to die?
Slowly, she began walking in the direction she had come. Her gaze lit on a dirt dobber’s nest and her heavy spirits began to lift. She saw God in so many earthbound things. A spider’s delicate web. An abundance of silver bells and bush honeysuckle. The warm, scented wind. If this be a fallen, half-forsaken world, what wonders lay in the next?
She had a large hope for what waited on the other side of death. She was sure James was there. If God be love and light, then death itself must be full of splendor. A gateway sure as the Gap.
Betimes in the stillness and sunlight James seemed only a handbreadth away. Wordless. Invisible. Ever present. She fancied she nearly felt the reach of his hand. His going had taken all fear of the wilderness away. She no longer cared what became of her.
Death was the door that led to James.
7
It came over me, then, that any woman who ever loves more than one man must carry forever with her, in her heart, a ghost.
—JANICE HOLT GILES
Sion felt he’d walked the entire length of the Shawnee River, every league convincing him that it was as much a foe as its namesake. The fog had lifted, but two more days had been lost. He stood along the river’s banks at its narrowest point thus far, scalp prickling. The greenish water still held an icy grip, and its ferocious rush was no match for the strongest raft, the ablest swimmer. Other rivers sluiced through his mind, yet unknown. The mighty Cherokee lay to the south, the Rockcastle, Muddy, Green, Pigeon, and Chenoa all writhing in other directions. Was the Chenoa as touchy? It stretched between them and Boonesborough. For now they needed only to ford the Shawnee to reach Crab Orchard, the rendezvous point.
He still felt a tad bewildered. Like he didn’t know if he was afoot or on horseback. The clear weather was no doubt an answer to Nate’s prayer, or so he claimed. Mayhap a fording place needed praying for too. But Sion sought an answer on his own, leaving the rest of his party at base camp.
Thirsty, he knelt at a willow-shaded spring and tasted the cold, sweet water, the hair on his neck still a-prickle. He retreated farther into the trees, glad for the covering, careful to keep moving. He tarried but once when he found a slight imprint along a creek bank. A lone Indian? The toes were pointed inward, the tread light. A lone Indian he could handle. A war party he could not.
Betimes the wilderness held an overpowering sense of aloneness. He longed to put names to nameless things. The only places he was now sure of were the Gap and the Moonbow Inn. Mayhap his uneasiness had to do with that.
Was she shadowing him again? He stifled the urge to call out.
Tempe.
Temptation got the best of him. He had blazed in his head a hundred times the trail he now took. Keeping clear of the thickets and windfalls and overgrown places in case of ambush, he walked on. Wrestling with himself all the way, he soon stood in back of the inn in deep twilight. Lights shone from a few shuttered windows, high enough off the ground to add safety in time of attack. Aglow like fireflies, the narrow loopholes winked at him in a sort of halfhearted welcome.
He’d forgotten what it was like to feel a bond, kinship. To come home. To be greeted, open-armed and openhearted . . .
On sight of him, the dogs began a chorus of discontent. Was Smokey among them? Sion’s gaze ranged from the dogtrot to a shadow filling a far doorway. The lame man? Sion helloed and saw a hand raise in welcome. Once again the air held the aroma of cornbread. Hot and crusty and thick with butter, if memory served.
Shouldering Annie, he bypassed the kitchen with its savory smells and rattle of crockery, aiming for the hay-scented expanse of the barn-shed. A pigeon cooed from a high rafter. He’d never seen so many pigeons as in Kentucke. Sometimes the sun was snuffed from their hurried flight.
The young man extended a hand, his eyes on the trees in back of Sion. “Welcome, Morgan . . . if you’ve no Englishman trailing.”
“None today, nay,” Sion said quietly. “You know my name. I would have yours.”
“Russell.” That guardedness flared again then quickly mellowed. “You’re not too late for supper.”
Sion shot a look toward the open keeping room door. “I wouldn’t brave it.”
“The womenfolk, you mean.” Unsmiling, Russell pointed to
a stool. “I could serve you out here.”
“I’m more in need of directions.” The words belied the surly growl of Sion’s belly.
“Directions?” Russell’s brows peaked slightly. “Best ask my sister, then.”
How easily he said it. As if this little bit of a woman had taken up the slack of all that he couldn’t do, lamed as he was.
Russell began a slow walk to the dogtrot, gaining Sion’s sympathy with every labored step. It was akin to being shackled, dragging that leg like a ball and chain, ever shy of the liberating key.
In seconds Tempe stood before him. She cocked her head to one side, her braid swinging free and brushing her hips. Sion found himself wishing Russell would return.
She studied him, a hint of distrust in her eyes—or mayhap dislike. “You don’t seem the sort of man to be bewildered, Morgan.”
Was that a compliment—or a subtle dig to his pride? “I’m in search of a fording place.”
“You mean to cross the Shawnee?”
“Aye. We’re to rendezvous in Crab Orchard just shy of the settlements. Meet up with a guide.”
She bit her lip, thoughtful. He liked that she took her time and didn’t spit out a hasty answer. “There’s but one fording place this time of year.” She reached for a stick and cut a wide swath in the dirt—indicating the river, no doubt—next marking an X where they now stood. He swallowed as her stick moved to the east. “You’ll find passage along Boone’s Trace, in the shadow of Pine Mountain. Look for a sandstone boulder. If it rides high in the water it’s safe to cross, else you’ll have to camp a spell.”
He digested the details, dwelling on the distance. With a flick of her wrist she sent the stick into the woodpile and left him looking into her eyes. An unabashed blue. As blue as the chicory crowding the door stone in back of her.
“How far?” he murmured.
“Fifty miles straight as the crow flies.”
Sion hid his dismay. “How wide the fording place?”
“Shoal water, some two hundred yards.”
“Obliged.” He took a step back, his odd desire to linger mingling with his wish to be gone. His mouth watered as the wind teased him, this time carrying the scent of roasting meat. Venison.
Russell reappeared, a tied bundle in hand. The drag of his leg along the dogtrot raised the same nettlesome question. How had he come by his injury? “You’re likely in need of meat. I’ve not heard any gunfire your way, lessen you load light like an Indian.”
Sion took the offering, and the greasy covering gave way, revealing a flitch of bacon and—lo and behold—cornbread. He nearly chuckled, anticipating Nate’s glee. “We’ve taken no shots, lit no cookfires.”
“All the better,” Tempe said. “The Warrior’s Path cuts across where you’re headed.” With that, she turned and made for the barn-shed, taking up a hoe in her journey.
He’d rather she have a gun. The sign he’d seen, even though it looked to be a lone Indian, was uppermost in his mind. Something was building inside him, something sinister in his spirit hinting that the inn’s inhabitants were one step away from ruination. Living like this, acting as if they weren’t planted smack in the middle of a yellow jacket’s nest but somewhere safe like parts East, was bound to stir up a mort of trouble.
With a biddable goodbye, Russell moved away, clearly expecting Sion to go. Into the barn-shed Tempe’s brother disappeared, the ensuing ring of his hammer on the anvil jarring in the sudden hush.
There, just inside the workplace, lay Smokey on a bed of cedar shavings. She gave a little yip of welcome. He could take her, carry her across his shoulders, but she was still not fit for travel. For the moment, Tempe crowded his thoughts, little more now than a swish of indigo skirts as the trees swallowed her from sight.
Where would a contrary woman with a hoe go in the purple twilight?
“You’d best take heed.”
Sion Morgan’s voice reached out to Tempe like a restraining hand as she stepped from shade to waning sunlight. She whirled, unsuspecting. Boone and Kenton were the onliest men she knew to creep quiet as an Indian. This man had just joined them.
She sensed his surprise at the corn as it spread behind her, the remaining flax a coverlet of blue blossoms. The toil it had taken was not lost on him. Stump after stump spoke of blistering days and sore nights, the constant fight to keep the forest at bay. She read appreciation—even admiration—in his slate gaze. And then it shifted to subtle concern.
He gestured north. “There’s Indian sign along the creek below.”
“It’s likely Raven, a Cherokee half-blood.” Her shoulders lifted. “He’s injured and liable to limp.”
“But it could be any unkindly Cherokee or Shawnee—and you arm yourself with a hoe.”
His quiet rebuke stung. “And you think your rifle would answer a volley of arrows?”
“Mayhap better than your hoe.”
“I’m not scared of death, Mister Morgan.”
His face flashed a question, but she turned toward the field, the glare of sunset making her squint. For a moment she lost herself in the lovely sight, tugged backwards to another time and place. The sky was just that shade of rose that long-ago day, pretty as a party dress. Her eyes smarted and she set her jaw.
James, James . . . Are there sunsets in heaven? Or is the Lord’s glory so great there’s nary a need for them?
Her thoughts tumbled one after another, resurrecting snatches of that day. The chill dawn. The stir of camp. Hope snuffed by fear.
Hearsay from the settlements brought a new ache. James’s kin were now busy marrying and settling out, then forting up as needs be. Time moved on, each beat never to be taken back.
“Take care, Tempe.”
The stranger’s ease with her name turned her round again. She felt a bristling at such familiarity, but in his defense, he couldn’t say Miss Tucker, as he didn’t know it. She, in turn, had begun to think of him as simply Sion.
Soundlessly he moved away, square shouldered and limber legged, rifle in hand. She watched him go gladly.
She pitied the Indian in Sion’s sights.
Backtracking fifty miles was no small task. There was no such thing as “straight as the crow flies.” Mosquitos and chiggers hatched amid a spell of sweat-stained weather. The bacon and corn cakes Russell had generously given over had run out long ago. Sion braved a shot and brought down a buffalo, jerking the meat and feasting on marrow bones over a chancy fire. Nearer the Warrior’s Path they stood double watch when they camped.
All was an unearthly quiet save the scampering of a squirrel or birdsong or the burble of an occasional creek. And then, like the strike of flint on steel, Boone’s Trace turned dusty, burdened by folks fleeing over the Gap.
“Lord have mercy . . .” Nate removed his hat and swiped at his damp forehead. “What’s come over all them people?”
The men crouched on a lip of limestone above the thin slip of trail leading back over the mountains. A party of harried settlers—men, women, and children—struggled back toward civilization. Safety. Single file they went, working upward in a line, the front and rear guard ever cautious.
“I smell blood in the air.” Cornelius’s voice was subdued, mayhap out of respect for the graves they’d just passed, the earth stacked high with stones just off the trace. “You’d best go down and see what the trouble is, Morgan.”
“The trouble is Indians, and it has little to do with us.”
“I beg to differ.” Cornelius let out his breath in a gust of disgust. “From what I’ve heard, the red men are none too particular about whose feet they heap burning coals upon or which fingernails they stick flaming pine splinters under. They—”
“Enough.” Sion’s hiss, though hatchet sharp, was more whisper. He didn’t want Spencer and Hascal and Lucian to hear. They stood farther back in a sheltered cove with the horses, awaiting directions. “There’s no call to alarm. We’ll take care to stay off the trace like we have the past three days. We should make
the fording place by dusk and then Crab Orchard.”
Uttering an oath, Cornelius stalked off, leaving Sion and Nate alone.
Nate turned beleaguered eyes on him. “I fear all this land grabbing has got into your soul.”
The words hung between them, full of angst. Next Nate would spout Scripture. Sion knew the very verse. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
“I’ve got a job to do and you signed on for that. We’ve lost time and needs be pressing toward the rendezvous point.”
Nate snapped free a sassafras twig from a nearby bush. “What’s drivin’ you? Greed or regret?”
Sion stifled a hasty retort. “Mayhap both,” he finally admitted. No sense turning surly with Nate. Nate had seen Sion’s misfortunes unroll like a map, knew every hill and valley. The last valley was all too fresh. Betimes he felt marked by misfortune, albeit blazed with a hatchet.
“You don’t want to add to your burden exposin’ men to unnecessary risk.” Nate chewed on the twig, pensive. “You don’t want that markin’ your conscience too.”
The woods were settling now, the last of the settlers fading from sight. Would they reach the Gap in safety? Sion turned his back to Nate, his voice rising above the spill of a waterfall. He took in the waiting men in his party below.
“There’s your last chance.” Every eye was on him as he jabbed a hand east. “Go. Leave if you must. There’s other chain men and markers to be had in the settlements. I’m headed toward Crab Orchard come what may.”
Tempe plied her needle, having let out her marrying dress. Tongue between her teeth, she worked as the candle at her side sputtered low in its pewter holder. She was not the girl she’d been in Powell Valley, neither in body nor in spirit. If only she could ease the strained seams of her mind, snip out all the tattered places, and sew in unsullied cloth. The fabric of her thoughts seemed bunched and knotted. Try as she might, she could not iron them out. Sion was mostly to blame, he and the Loyal Land Company. When he’d left her in the field, carrying his bacon and bread a few days past, she’d thought of little else.