The Frontiersman’s Daughter

  “And you let him?”

  “Seems a small price to pay to keep you.”

  “When? How?” she sputtered.

  “Near dawn, with his scalping knife.”

  “While I slept?” She swallowed hard, for she was sounding like Ma now, all growl and bite.

  With a wink, he turned toward the trail, toward the fort, leaving her to fall in step behind him. She reached into her pocket and fingered the blue beads, wondering if Captain Jack would keep her hair close as well. Sighing, she took a reluctant step away from the dying campfire.

  Time spent with the Shawnee only deepened their mystery instead of unraveling it. Was this Pa’s feeling too? Having lived among them, did he feel the same irresistible, if dangerous, pull to be with them? Was this how the Indians felt about him? Though she didn’t ask and he didn’t answer, she knew.

  She wondered if she’d ever see the Shawnee, or Captain Jack, again.

  18

  Lael stood with her father in the center of the fort common, his packhorses burdened with all manner of furs, a passel of people there to welcome him. Snow was falling, but no one seemed to care. Colonel Corey and the militia had welcomed him in with a volley of gunfire. Her ma and Ransom could hardly get to him for the press of folks hungry for news of any kind, all anxious to hear if he thought it safe for them to return to their homesteads beyond fort walls. Out of the corner of her eye, Lael noticed Hugh McClary coming out of Ma Horn’s cabin, but she thought little of it.

  In time, the welcoming throng began to disperse and the family faced the bearded, muddy, trail-worn figure they hardly recognized. Even Nip and Tuck looked pinched and weary, ready to drop.

  Looking hard at Lael, Pa turned to open one of his saddlebags. She clasped her hands together, expectant. Had he brought her something then?

  Behind them, someone shouted hoarsely from the door of a cabin. A warning? Thunderous gunfire ripped through the common, scattering stock and settlers. Pa was turning around, holding something in his hand, when he fell. Blood spattered onto Lael’s butternut dress. The gift—a small box—dropped to her feet, and then she followed, falling hard to the ground after him.

  At first glance it seemed two had fallen from Hugh McClary’s bullet, but Lael had only fainted. Colonel Corey carried her to the Click cabin while others moved her father. The trail of blood on the ground marked an inglorious homecoming. A scuffle ensued as McClary’s rifle was wrested away despite his screaming epithets and obscenities in a whiskey-soaked voice. He would soon be locked up and flogged, then forcibly evicted from fort walls. This was lenient punishment, the colonel said, as he doubted even the Shawnee would want him. And all this after one of the Click clan’s own had nursed him through the weary winter.

  Lael rose up to find him lying on a bed surrounded by a press of people. Colonel Corey tried to shield her but she pushed forward, chilled by the sight of so much blood. After some minutes Ma Horn determined the wound was in Pa’s right thigh. His face faded to the color of gray linen as a fellow trapper worked to extract the ball while she attempted to stay the bleeding.

  She looked up suddenly at Lael. “Fetch some comfrey and snakeroot from my cabin.”

  Lael ran next door, her hands far calmer than her twisted insides. With some help, she concocted a poultice. When at last the ball had come out, they cleaned the wound with corn liquor and applied the snakeroot while Ma Horn tore linen into rags for bandages.

  For a sudden, dizzying moment, Lael felt the stuffy room sway and suffocate her. She put one hand out and covered Pa’s still, cool wrist. Beneath her fingers she could feel the rhythm of his pulse, and it steadied her. Still, the bandages turned scarlet as soon as they were applied, and they were pulled free for fresh ones. Ma Horn began binding the wounded leg so tight the entire thigh was soon encased in a cocoon of cloth.

  Lael sponged Pa’s face with a damp rag, but he didn’t so much as twitch. What if this small gesture was to be the last given to him? What if they were to next wash his body for burial? She’d be left with nothing but the hoard of unasked riddles and questions that had dogged her since childhood. She swallowed hard, feeling small and scared again, just as she had years ago when learning of his capture. She glanced toward Ransom, his still, bent body crumpled in the door frame. No one in the cabin spoke. A vigil had begun that would not end until he awoke or passed on. The heavy bleeding and threat of blood poisoning still loomed.

  With a heavy sigh, the trapper retreated to the warm hearth to finish off the rest of the corn liquor. Colonel Corey stood at the door, barring entry to those who waited outside.

  After a while they heard cries of “String up McClary!”

  The trapper swore, setting down his jug. “McClary’s the cause of all this blood and trouble, him with a temper that would curdle milk.”

  Inwardly, Lael flinched. His words bore the makings of a deadly feud. But she knew the trouble had begun long ago at the salt licks when her father had been faced with an impossible choice. Truly, he had saved the settlement. Hadn’t both judge and jury said that it was so at the court-martial? But Hugh McClary believed none of it.

  “He’ll live, but he’ll limp to his dying day,” Ma Horn pronounced when the danger seemed past.

  Lael fell to her knees in the cold loft and said a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord for sparing him. With McClary not seen since the flogging and no fresh Shawnee sign about, it seemed they could finally go home to the cabin and abide in peace, at least for a time.

  Before she blew out the candle and slipped under the coverlet, Lael took out the gift from Pa and held it in one cold hand. Aside from the blue beads, she’d never owned a piece of jewelry, at least not a civilized one such as this. The pale pink and ivory cameo fit in her palm, a profile of a pretty girl etched upon its shell surface, her flowing tresses entwined with leaves and flowers and berries like some woodland fairy. She reckoned she would never wear it, as it was too fine to be pinned to a homespun dress. But she would keep it with her always, in her pocket, alongside the blue beads.

  19

  Before spring, Simon came.

  From the yard one crisp morning, Lael heard Ransom shout, “Rider comin’!” She was inside the cabin with her mother, salting venison and layering it in a tub. At Ransom’s call, Ma passed to the window and peered beyond the shutter, a slight frown creasing her face.

  “’Tis Simon Hayes,” was all she said.

  The words set Lael’s face afire. She’d not seen him since he’d come drunk to their cabin at the fort and put her down for her wandering ways.

  Hastily, she wiped salty hands on her apron and looked down at her soiled dress. Too late to fuss, she decided. Barefoot, she passed onto the porch and walked to the end where the wild roses stood waiting for winter’s spell to release them to blossom. Still, the bare, thick canes formed a screen of privacy. She sat down in the cane chair and waited.

  Horse and rider came to a stop by the springhouse. Ransom greeted Simon and they exchanged a few words before Simon went into the barn, leaving his horse to the boy. Lael knew then he’d come to see Pa about her.

  She sat still as stone, her eyes fixed on the barn door while her heart thrummed a bit wildly in her chest. Her hands were red and chapped from the salt, and a cut on her palm where the knife had slipped stung unmercifully. She smiled wryly and tucked her bare feet underneath the hem of her dress against the chill. If Simon had come courting, he would court her shoeless and bonnetless or not at all.

  The minutes grew long, and her eyes never left the barn door. She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and willed him to appear. From the yard Ransom resumed splitting burly ash logs into kindling. The chop-chop-chop jarred her nerves till she could stand it no longer. Peering through the screen of rose canes, she hissed, “Ransom, git!”

  He paused in mid-swing and grinned at her before laying aside the ax. She watched his back as he retreated to the springhouse, likely to snitch a cup of buttermilk, and she breathed a grateful sigh.
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  When Simon finally appeared, he did not so much as glance at the cabin. Out the barn door he blew with a purposeful stride and, in one quick motion, untethered and mounted the horse Ransom had tied to the rail fence. Before she could step off the porch and call his name he was gone, into the woods and lost from sight. Her spirits, which had soared at the mere sight of him, now plummeted to her toes.

  She walked straight to the barn. The door was ajar and Pa’s back was to her. He was repairing a harness and seemed to take no notice of her entrance. She had made it a practice never to disturb him if she could help it, but today the self-made rule was cast aside. The sight of his bad leg, still bandaged, pained her, but her anger welled up within her in a hot rising flood and made her breathless. She stood just within the barn, breathing in the scent of leather and hay and livestock, a hundred questions hot on her tongue.

  Without turning around, he said, “Daughter, I cannot let you wed young Hayes.”

  The statement struck her hard as no hand could ever do. She could only gape at him, certain he’d change his mind when Simon told him of the cabin he’d built, the stock he’d secured, and the cotton and tobacco, all for their future.

  Turning, he looked straight at her, his blue eyes like deep water. “No good can come from such a union.”

  She swallowed a tart reply. “You sent him away.”

  “He never spoke with you?”

  The ache in her chest was so strong she almost couldn’t answer. Unable to look at him, she looked at her feet. “I reckon he thought better of it since you two had words.”

  His voice turned gentler. “Daughter, do you love him?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she stammered, afraid saying more would set her to bawling.

  “You’d know if you did,” came his grave reply. “I misdoubt he cares for you like you hope. Word is he’s tied to Piper Cane. And the jug.”

  Word is . . . rumors, all! Her face deepened to scarlet. To hear such from her pa was shameful indeed. In a fit of fury she flung the lovely cameo from her pocket. It came to rest in a pile of hay near his feet. He eyed it with characteristic calm, revealing nothing, before looking at her again.

  “Simon Hayes is all show and no stay,” he warned. “No daughter of mine is going to be tied to a trotter.”

  A trotter. Next to a coward this was the worst possible brand. Suddenly she didn’t know whom she was most angry with— Simon or Pa. Her heart felt like a kettle left too long at the fire, boiled dry, about to explode. Balling her hands into fists, she sought words but none came.

  Laying the leather aside, he faced her once again. “You’d best put all thoughts of marryin’ aside. Come spring, you’ll be leavin’ the settlement.”

  20

  As long as memory served, the image of Pa, made years younger in broadcloth the rich brown of chestnut, his face clean-shaven beneath a beaver felt hat, would never leave Lael. Sitting across from him in a lurching coach, the likes of which she’d never seen, she thought how strange he looked out of buckskin—not a woodsman at all, but a judge or a preacher or something other than who he was. His sandy hair, the color of her own, had been twice washed and swept back from his face in waves as soft as a woman’s, then tied at the nape of his neck.

  Since leaving the settlement it seemed she’d shed a trail of tears. There had been time enough to bid good-bye to Susanna, Simon, and Ma Horn, but their sorrow had only made matters worse, not better. As soon as Pa’s leg enabled him to travel, they’d departed, riding back over the gap through which he’d come all those years before. This was her first foray out of the wilderness. She felt suddenly bewildered, thrust into a strange, new world like an infant from its mother’s womb.

  By the time they reached the Clinch River in Virginia, they were beyond the frontier, past fear and Shawnee and stockades and uncertainty. Her old life was extinguished as fast as a candle flame as they sped east toward civilization and crowds and comforts.

  As they set out, she’d asked, “Pa, where are we headed?”

  “Briar Hill,” he answered simply. Where Miss Mayella lived.

  What she should have asked was Why? and How long?

  In time she would regret her reticence. Briar Hill was some four hundred miles away, days upon days of hard travel.

  Eventually she became too tired to talk. The sights before her snatched speech. Wide roads. Bells ringing from clusters of brick buildings. Churches with white steeples. Coaches and chaises and contraptions too smart to believe. Queer trees such as cypresses and pitch pines. And more people pressed together in one place than she had ever thought possible.

  Was this her punishment for wandering? Or her reward? Did Pa feel he could no longer protect her from the Shawnee, limping as he did with an injured leg? Or was he afraid she’d run off with Simon?

  Everywhere they went, be it inn or coach or tavern, there was talk of the war with England. Her soul seemed to shrink from such news and from the restless crowds. To maintain her bearings, to remember who she was, she recollected the eternal stillness of the frontier forest . . . the flash of fireflies at dusk . . . the feel of the milk churn in her hand and the moment she knew the butter had come . . . the bubbling of the branch . . . the way the dogwoods, blossoming now, danced in the wind. Except for her memories, all she had left of her old life were the blue beads in her pocket.

  When she felt she could go no farther, the coach rumbled to a stop before a white-columned building shaded by a cluster of enormous oaks. Their rustling was like a balm to her nervous spirits. She had forever loved the wind and here it was to welcome her, whispering a greeting through the new spring leaves.

  Emerging from the coach, Lael saw that they stood on a hill that sloped gently to a rose garden and, beyond that, the sea. She gaped at the sight of all that spangled, shimmering blueness, looking like the sky turned upside down. As if prompted by some unseen clock, the door of the brick building opened and Miss Mayella herself came forward, embracing Lael and erasing all the years that had come between them.

  Her former teacher looked much the same—all silk and lace and milky skin—and Lael’s eyes fastened on her smile, feeling it was the only thing that propped her up. “Welcome to Briar Hill. You must be weary from your travels. No doubt, Miss Lael, you’ll become célèbre here, being from the frontier and having so famous a father.”

  Miss Lael. Never in her life had she been called Miss Lael. Never in her life had she seen Negroes dressed like gentlefolk in black trousers and pristine shirts and shoes with shiny buckles. Never before had she seen the grace with which a cluster of girls in indigo moved across the expansive lawn toward the sea, hardly walking at all but gliding, lace-edged parasols in hand. Never before had she been in rooms that echoed and smelled of books and leather and lemon oil.

  She felt suddenly small and awkward and homespun. Even clothed in her best apple-green dress, she sensed she was out of place, a spectacle. Suddenly it all came clear. Pa was going to leave her here with these people to winnow the wilderness out of her.

  The spring breeze turned wintry then, and she felt the same strange desolation she’d felt as a girl upon hearing of his capture. And then, as if he sensed her misgivings, he suddenly took his leave. Doffing his beaver hat, he failed to kiss her cheek. If he had, she would have clung to him, weeping. Instead, in silent agony, she remained by Miss Mayella, staring down the long emerald drive after him.

  She stood as she would so often in the days to come, looking westward. Just stood and looked, not speaking or even weeping, just waiting.

  “I’ll be back to bring you home,” Pa said as he left.

  It was a promise she wondered if he would keep.

  21

  Lael felt fettered, shackled to books and clocks and finishing school rules. Within a week, she’d written each rebuke she’d earned from her teachers in a journal Miss Mayella provided.

  You must be a lady before you can act a lady.

  No more ayes and nays, only yes and no.

&nb
sp; A lady’s skin must be milk white, not tobacco brown.

  Always be in a good humor.

  Never look a gentleman directly in the eye.

  Stuffed into whalebone stays that poked and prodded like the most ardent suitor, she walked about in an indigo dress as if encased in armor, her white collar and cuffs irreproachable. Even the ribbons in her hair had been ironed, just like those of her twenty-six schoolmates. The only difference, she reckoned, were the blue beads in her dress pocket and the rising homesickness in her heart.

  “Briar Hill grows on you in time,” Lydia Darrah assured her. The oldest girls were paired with the youngest, and Lydia had been assigned to Lael. They shared an attic room with four other girls, their slim beds laid out like garden rows and covered with cabbage-rose coverlets.

  “Our time isn’t always taken up with French and music and writing. Those with the highest marks may attend the opera and theater. I doubt that will change even with the war on. Aren’t we lucky the British are still fighting in the east and haven’t yet moved south?”

  Lucky? Lael wished they would so she could go home. Keeping abreast of the war became her mission as she smuggled copies of the Virginia Gazette into her room, defying the headmistress’s latest rebuke: A true lady does not pursue politics, particularly matters of war.

  Perhaps she could simply run away, straight back into Simon’s arms. Or Captain Jack’s. As the days passed, she no longer looked for Pa’s return but Simon. By now, Simon would have planned to come after her. She was not so far away, and the Hayes clan had kin in Virginia.

  As summer waned, her hopes flickered like a spent candle. Might he write her a letter? A letter was a simple matter, to be savored and tucked in one’s bodice and read again and again.