Chilled, she finally lit a fire and looked back just once, recollecting how she and Simon had rowed the river in a boat with bittersweet at its bow and he’d begged her to run away with him.
The Sabbath passed quietly, but on Monday she steeled herself for the coming confrontation. Lael chose a plain indigo dress and put her hair up with a multitude of pins, topping it off with the straw hat she favored. For once she regretted she had no bonnet to hide behind.
She could have found her way blindfolded to Fort Click. She crested Hackberry Ridge with a queer feeling in her whole being. The sun was in her eyes, but the settlement was plain before her. She felt like a girl again, come to fort up in times of trouble or simply fetch supplies with Pa. For a fleeting moment she drew the mare to a halt, unable to go on.
The fort had two new blockhouses and its gates were open wide, a sign of peaceful times. The outlying cornfields looked newly turned, pale green stalks thrusting through the rich soil. The new church stood apart, its logs green and shiny. And then there was the river with paths worn to and fro, and the twin springs shaded by the age-old tree Ma called the divine elm.
Recognized or not, she knew she would create a stir simply because she was a woman and she rode alone. At the gate a group of men looked up as she passed. She lowered her head and eyed the row of cabins. Susanna hadn’t told her which was Ma Horn’s. She looked about in bewilderment, passing children and dogs at play on the common, her ears assaulted by the high-pitched ring of the blacksmith’s anvil. But it was not Simon’s father who hammered hard at the smithy, for the Hayes clan had moved farther west.
She tethered her horse to a nearby post and knocked on the cabin door she remembered. Her spirits fell when there was no response. She knocked again, so loudly this time she felt she was calling all the fort’s inhabitants out of their cabins and announcing her presence. And then she remembered: Ma Horn was half blind and a bit deaf, Susanna said. With a push at the door, she entered, standing on the sill long enough for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
From the shadows came a beloved, quivery voice. “I’ve been prayin’ for your return, child. Five long years. And now the good Lord has seen fit to answer my prayers.”
Ma Horn was much changed. Lael knelt by the old woman’s rocker and laid her head in the apron-covered lap and cried, tears of gladness and of mourning. Ma Horn’s arthritic fingers stroked her bent head and the years fell away and she was a child again, loved and understood and at rest.
“Did they try to take all the wilderness out of you at that fancy school?”
Lael assured her they had not, pointing to her bare feet as proof.
“Law, but you’re a sight for sore eyes. You look the same, only you’ve growed taller. You always did have the prettiest head of hair in the country.”
They drank steaming cups of sassafras tea, and Lael felt a bittersweet sadness. Everything felt strange, a bit rusty, as if she herself had changed so much she couldn’t quite get comfortable again. Several times the old woman reached out to pat Lael’s hand or head as if to convince herself she’d truly come home.
“So your ma’s took another husband. It’s to be expected, her being a woman who can’t do without a man and pinin’ for your pa.”
“Mr. Ashcroft is a barrister,” Lael told her. “They met when he settled Pa’s estate. It was through him that Pa deeded me the land.”
“Your pa did right to leave you the land. I reckon you’ll be stayin’ on then.”
“Aye, it’s my home. I never should have left it.”
But Ma Horn shook her head. “It ain’t fittin’ for you to be livin’ alone, child.”
Lael squeezed her bony, work-hardened hand. “Come home with me. Let me take you out of this place. Let me be your eyes and ears from here on.”
But Ma Horn only smiled. “This here’s my home now and I don’t often pass a lonely day. Folks come as far as Castle Rock to get my remedies and to sit a spell.”
Lael looked up, wondering how she possibly went herbing. Overhead were the same baskets she helped fill when they went a-gathering in the old days. The pungent scent of herbs—a touch medicinal and somewhat spicy—pervaded the gloom. Just this morning Lael had come across a patch of ginseng along the creek bottom and the sight nearly unseated her from her horse.
“I aim to dig some ginseng for profit. I’ll bring you some if you need it,” she promised.
“Bring some coltsfoot and a peck of salat too. There ain’t nothin’ like salat to strengthen the blood come spring.”
Before Lael finished her tea, Ma Horn was dozing in her chair. She was loath to leave, yet she had other business to attend to. The long list in her pocket would take time to settle. She moved to the door noiselessly, but before she could open it Ma Horn came awake.
“Are you pinin’ for Simon, child?”
Lael tied the ribbons of her straw hat under her chin with deft fingers and forced steadiness into her voice. “Some. But I don’t aim to pine long for a married man.”
The sutler said there was no wagon to be had, just a two-wheeled cart. Lael decided it would suit her, perusing the store’s dimly lit interior and peeking into kegs and barrels as she went. The walls were thick with merchandise, from hand tools to sundry spices. She marveled at the improved selection and wondered where the old storekeeper had gone. What Ma would have given for some nutmeg! A wood-and-tin nutmeg grater proved irresistible, and a small collection of bottled mustards and vinegars was purchased as much for sentiment as practicality. Pa had always been fond of such. She had trouble keeping to her list the longer she tarried.
As the storekeeper weighed salt and cut deer hide for moccasins, she felt him cast sly glances toward her, her pale profile half hidden beneath the straw hat. She finished counting out her money while he gathered up the heaviest goods and followed her into the blinding sunlight.
They worked together to hitch the cart to the mare, failing to notice the small crowd gathering. When the cart was finally loaded and tied down and she turned to mount her horse, she looked up.
“Well, I’ll be switched if it ain’t Lael Click!”
On the other side of the mare stood old Amos, the fort fiddler, nearly toothless and with a grin so wide it seemed about to swallow his face. She grinned back at him, then just as abruptly he sobered. “I was real sorry to hear about your pa.”
The sorrow in his eyes touched her, and she looked around as other faces came into focus. Old timers, all of them. There was Jane McFee and Silas Minor who had first come over the gap with Pa. And then there was John Logan, a surveyor and hunting partner of Pa’s as well.
She greeted them, and the crowd pressed closer and began to pepper her with questions. Five years was a lot of territory to cover, she thought, but she answered them as best she could. Not one of them cautioned or rebuked her for living alone, but she could read the concern in their faces.
“I got a good rooster and some hens I can spare you,” Jane offered kindly. “Some rags too, if you’ll be needin’ rugs to pretty up your place.”
“If you need some seed, I got some extry to give,” Silas said.
She knew better than to refuse them, and so, with a promise to return on the morrow, she got up on the mare and bid them good-bye. She had much yet to do this day and, with a renewed sense of purpose in her heart, she waved farewell and set out toward home.
26
Woven with the evening shadows was a chorus of tree frogs and katydids. Lael washed up the dishes she’d bought at the fort, hanging her dishrag to dry on a stump and carrying the rinse water to the garden. It was so lovely and cool for a June evening that she brought her journal and ink onto the porch. With a steady flowing hand she dated her next entry.
June 4, 1783. The weather is dry and fair . . .
She looked up at the fading skyline, with its wisps of gauzy clouds. Mare’s tails, Pa called them. She lay down her quill, remembering her own mare. At her call, only the sigh of the wind was her answer. It had become a
n evening ritual to take her to the outlying meadow, but tonight she’d forgotten. She stepped off the porch, looking to the wall of woods to the west. Behind her, the cabin sat in shadows. Though belled, the mare was nowhere to be found, and the darkness was deepening.
Perhaps a painter was about and the mare had spooked. Horses feared painters like people feared haints. Slowly, she retraced her steps. As she rounded the cabin she heard a deep, distressed whinny. To her dismay, the mare had trampled Ma’s bed of black-eyed Susans hugging the chimney wall. The proud flowers lay crushed and askew, their petals scattered. Before Lael could take one more step, the mare bolted and ran off toward the river.
And then she knew. Dogs gone queer. Hens refusing to lay. Cows milling about, refusing to go to pasture . . .
With a small cry she ran inside the cabin. Her thoughts were flighty and vacuous. With furious haste she moved about. She became her mother again, slamming the shutters closed and barring the door, laying the rifle upon the table with powder and lead, finally banking the fire. She stopped short of climbing to the loft and drawing the ladder up after her.
Soon the sound of hoofbeats thundered, but in her befuddled state she couldn’t tell if it was one or a dozen riders. All she knew was they came at breakneck speed through the brush, calling to her before they reached the cabin. Two men crossed into the yard, raising a storm of dust, but only one paused. The other disappeared into the woods on the path that led to Cozy Creek.
Lael took up the rifle and stepped onto the porch, feeling she might be sick. The rider removed his battered hat at the sight of her. “Name’s Asa Forbes, miss. There’s Indians comin’ from the north, seeking revenge after two trappers ambushed a party of Shawnees near Tate’s Creek. We’re ridin’ to warn ye.” He crammed his hat back on his unruly brown head as if to hurry her, his solid frame taut with tension.
There was no choice but to fort up. Tears pricked her eyes— tears this man would take for fear but were instead a mortal dread. The prospect of meeting Simon was at hand, and she could do nothing to avoid it.
“My horse ran off,” she said dully.
“I’ll take you in,” he volunteered, coming nearer the porch.
With a heavy step, Lael grabbed a basket of herbs, fastened the top shut with a leather thong, and got up behind the man who looked to be little older than she herself. With her gun tucked in the crook of her arm, its barrel pointing skyward, she took a last look at the cabin and wondered when or if she’d see it again.
As they crested Hackberry Ridge, the moon had never looked so big or so bright. It was during such a moon that travel by night would be simple and certain for their attackers. Lael shivered as they made haste to the fort’s gates. Inside the common was a mob of anxious people and animals. Candles shone from every cabin window, including Ma Horn’s.
Everywhere there was a queer feeling of chaos. She wondered who would step forward and take charge now that Pa was gone. Even Colonel Corey had moved on, though they had need of his marksmanship at such a tense time. Somewhere in the throng stood Simon, she felt sure. As soon as she was able she slipped off Asa Forbes’s horse and disappeared into Ma Horn’s cabin.
Inside, Ma Horn had a Bible open in her lap, the hearth’s fire illuminating the Psalms. “The moon’s ripe for trouble, child, and there’s naught but a bunch of bootless rogues and ruffians to lead us. I’ll be countin’ on the women to bring us through. Jane McFee and Eliza Harold are dead shots—better’n most men.”
Lael added several sticks of wood to the fire, the dread of a long siege coming back to her. “We’ll have need of bullets come morning. Remember the time we had to melt your pewter plates? Now where’s your lead kettle and molds?”
“Underneath the bed,” Ma Horn sighed and stirred out of her rocker. “With bullets come wounds so we’d best be brewing some poultices as well.”
They set to work, laying the filled molds to cool on the trestle table, cutting bandages from clean cloth, straining slippery elm and white oak for poultices. In time, Susanna and the children came seeking refuge, and Will, a member of the militia, left to join the men gathered on the common.
Lael stood by the shuttered window and watched the small company muster. At first her eyes passed blithely over the rows of men facing eastward and away from her, then they turned searching, almost beseeching, assessing height and girth. Even with a beaver hat covering his shock of red hair, Lael could have picked Simon out of a thousand such men, so engraved was his every manner on her heart.
He stood at the end of the second row, so near he could hear her if she called. He was head and shoulders above the other men, and this distinction made her feel a pride she couldn’t own.
Turn away, her judgment warned.
Stay, her heart called.
Torn, she did both, turning a cold shoulder and then, succumbing to the desire to look at him after so long, she placed both hands along the sill and leaned forward and let the years melt away.
I never aimed to be your brother, Lael, he’d told her. Nay, once he’d wanted much more than that.
She didn’t take her eyes off Simon until the report of a rifle made her stiffen. The men on the common scrambled, flying to their assigned posts. She watched as Eliza Harold and Jane McFee, dressed in breeches and hunting shirts, took up positions along the north wall. Simon and Will disappeared into the southeast blockhouse.
Within moments Susanna was beside her, face drawn. “So it’s begun.”
Lael closed the shutter. “One shot, is all. Will is—”
But her voice was drowned out by a volley of gunfire. A whimper on the loft ladder made them turn. Susanna went to the children, forcing a smile. “Come down for some breakfast, and Ma Horn’ll tell you a story.”
The three of them ran to Ma Horn’s outstretched arms, while Susanna set about making mush. Heart tripping, Lael began filling a gunnysack with lead, ignoring the call to stay and eat. As she slipped outside, the smell of spent powder and the curl of smoke brought home the terror and uncertainty of the moment. But all she could think about was Simon. Simon was here, somewhere. And where Simon was, Piper surely followed.
She walked along the south wall, carrying her load, anxious to peer out a gun hole but all were taken. She found Asa Forbes in the process of reloading, and she boldly stepped into his position, her eyes sweeping Hackberry Ridge and then the river.
Asa swore under his breath as he uncapped his powder horn. “Beats all I ever seen—Wyandotte by water and Shawnee by land. Them rascals have joined forces against us. If you be any sort of a shot at all, miss, you best be joinin’ us here at the wall.”
She saw plainly the canoes that lined the beloved banks of the river, the painted, near-naked men who’d brought them there crouching low in the thick brush just out of rifle range. But the ridge? At first glance, the ridge looked peaceful and green as always. But the longer she looked the subtlety of movement there chilled her. The stirring of a bush when there was no wind. The flicker of the rising sun on a gun barrel. The sudden flush of a skittish bird.
Unsettled, she turned away. She’d not thought it would come to this. She’d counted on this being a false alarm like other times or, at worst, a short-lived skirmish. Fort Click was known for its guns and men like Pa who—
Another volley of rifle fire thundered as a large party of Shawnee came running down from the ridge, screaming like banshees and firing rifles of their own. Asa Forbes pushed her aside, shoving his gun through the hole, then sighting and firing.
Almost choking from the smoke, Lael turned away and saw someone fall from the pickets. With a cry she ran forward, forgetting the gunnysack. A man lay face down in the dirt, his hat several feet away. She turned him over, fear chewing a hole in her stomach, and saw that he was just a boy.
Dead? His wound was in the shoulder and though not a mortal one, he was unconscious. She sighed with relief though blood was flowing into the ground. Ma Horn’s cabin was only a few steps away. Soon she had him moved and lyi
ng on the corner bed in the cabin. As she cleaned the wound, Ma Horn came and looked him over.
“He’s John Logan’s boy, Sam. You’d best send for his ma when you’re through. She can tend him while you see to another.”
Another? Lael prayed there would be no others. But within an hour, two more men lay on straw pallets on the cabin floor.
Will returned, face grim. “They’ve begged off and want to parley. Captain Jack is calling for some of the militia to meet him outside the gate.”
Captain Jack? Lael’s hands stilled and she stared at Will.
One of the wounded men on the floor groaned. “It’s a bloody trick, Bliss! They’ll lift your scalp soon as you set foot outside. Them white trappers killed six of their warriors. You think they’ll stop with any less of our men?”
“I ain’t familiar with the new Shawnee chief,” Will mused, passing an agitated hand over his beard. “I don’t know whether his word is good or not, though he does speak English. With our powder gettin’ low we have little choice but to parley.”
“And if you refuse?” Lael asked, changing the bloodied dressing on the wounded boy.
Will looked directly at her, a nervous tic pulling at his left eye. “If we refuse, they’ll likely set fire to the fort—and the cornfields.”
He left them, and the ensuing silence was more terrifying than the gunfire. The cabin was overly warm and sickly smelling from the brewing herbs, but it was the sweat of the men, borne out of fear and pain, that made breathing a chore.
Breathless, she slipped outside. The moon was already rising above Hackberry Ridge, and a lull in the gunfire created a strained hush. Taking her gun, Lael went to a vacant gun hole and peered out. A dozen or so redmen lay scattered between the fort’s main gate and the river. In the moonlight their war paint and glossy hair and jewelry bore an eerie luster. Near the gate were two of their own. The white men lay as still as the fallen Indians, unmoving, their blood soaking the ground. This then was the result of the parley. In the gloom she couldn’t determine who they were. Could one be Will?