The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  Tamsen fingered a lock of drying hair. She’d spotted a sizable gap in the story, between the tiny child he’d been, adopted by Shawnees, and the man sitting before her now. “Shawnee warriors found you? But you said your father—Cade—is Delaware. Where does he come in? Why is your name Jesse Bird now? And how—”

  “Hold on,” he said, stemming her flood of questions with a laugh. “This is where it gets twisty. Cade’s pa was a white man, his ma full-blood Lenape, but he’d got himself adopted by the Shawnees too, a grown man. Wolf-Alone, they called him. Cade’s a good hunter, even better in a fight. He was thought highly of for one adopted after running the gauntlet.” He paused, then with a cautious look asked, “You know what that is?”

  She’d heard of it. “They—the Indians—line up and make a man run past while they hit him with sticks?” The night breeze gusted, tickling the back of her neck. She suppressed a shiver at the thought of such cruelty.

  “Sticks, whips, other things,” he said. “Sometimes war clubs.”

  A horror dawned in Tamsen’s mind. “Not you? They don’t make children do that, surely?”

  “Not small children, no. But I’ve seen older boys, women …” Mr. Bird searched her face, then redirected the conversation. “Anyway, by the time I was four, maybe five years old, Wolf-Alone took to spending time with me, teaching me to track and set snares, even made me a little bow so I could practice. My Shawnee parents were older, so he stepped in and taught me like an uncle would’ve done. But he also spoke English to me on the sly, when it was just the two of us. Didn’t want to forget it himself, he’s told me. So I grew up knowing how to speak it, more or less, though for years I was more conversant in Shawnee.”

  That answered a question Tamsen hadn’t even thought to ask yet, why he had no trace of an accent, save the drawl of an Overmountain man. “Why did the two of you ever leave the Shawnees?”

  She wondered if he minded her questions, but he didn’t appear displeased. She was glad, for she wanted him to go on talking. The sound of his voice was a comfort, a shield. Like the firelight, it was helping hold back that vast unknown looming dark around her. Besides, he had a remarkable story, and he told it well.

  She knew now she’d misjudged him, based on their first meetings in the stable. Not only was he brave and kind, but watching his face now, she glimpsed an intelligence and wit that his rustic manners and speech at first had obscured. Or perhaps it was his eyes that masked the depth of thought behind them. Such an unnerving shade …

  “I suppose the blame lies with Virginia’s governor at the time, Lord Dunmore,” he said in answer to her question. “I’d been seven years with the Shawnees when the Virginians made war on the people. This was a year or so before the colonies rebelled, the autumn of ’74. Dunmore’s War, they call it now. My adopted pa, Split Moon, was too old for battle but not too old to hunt, and at ten I was finally big enough to go along and not be in the way. We’d thought it safe, since the fighting had stopped back in October and our chief, Cornstalk, was talking peace with the Virginians. We hadn’t crossed the Ohio—it was too dangerous, with our old Kan-tuck-ee hunting grounds filling up with settlers. The Ohio was meant to be the new boundary between the red man and the white. But that didn’t stop hunters, even settlers, from crossing over onto our side. Three days out, a party of white hunters stumbled onto our camp. There were four of us—Split Moon, a warrior called Falling Hawk, Wolf-Alone, and me. It was early morning. I’d just woken up and gone off a ways to a creek to wash. Wolf-Alone had gone with me. We heard the shots, could see through the trees, Split Moon and Falling Hawk were down, hit before they could reach their muskets. Dead.”

  Instead of fighting on after Split Moon and Falling Hawk were shot, Jesse told her, Wolf-Alone had snatched him up as if he were a flour sack and fled, getting shot at for a mile over trackless ground before outrunning the hunters, with Wildcat struggling all the while, wanting to go back and avenge his fallen father.

  “Wolf-Alone was a sight bigger’n me then, and about five times stronger.” Mr. Bird gazed past the fire, as if beyond its light, he could see that boy he described for her, furious with grief and bloodlust. “He told me plain weren’t no hope in going back, and he wasn’t minded to let me throw my life away afore I’d lived it. He told me God—the white man’s God, the Christian God—had a plan for me and betwixt him and whatever angels were lent to guard us, Wolf-Alone meant to see it unfold.”

  Wildcat hadn’t much cared for those words, and soon, Mr. Bird went on, it was clear that Wolf-Alone had no intention of returning him to the Shawnees at all. He was taking the angry, grieving boy south, to the hated whites. Wildcat, feeling himself and their people betrayed, escaped him twice before injuring himself in a fall from a ridge.

  Mr. Bird stroked his right shin, as if feeling the echo of an old wound. “I’d broken my leg and was out of my head with the pain of it when Wolf-Alone caught me the second time. He picked me up, and eventually we came stumbling, me dangling in his arms, into a clearing in the wilds of Kan-tuck-ee, found a cabin with folk not inclined to shoot every Indian they saw on sight—a miracle, Cade likes to say. They gave us shelter in their barn while my leg healed. Their name was Bird.”

  It wasn’t until they’d left that place that Wolf-Alone started calling him Jesse Bird, after the youngest boy in that family. “ ‘They were good people,” he told me when I asked why he was calling me so. “They won’t mind you borrowing the name.’ ”

  “And Cade?” Tamsen asked. “Where did he get that name for himself?”

  Mr. Bird shrugged. “Picked it out of the air, I reckon. He’s never said. Anyway, by then I’d grown used to the idea of being with him. He’d been like an uncle to me for years, after all. Cade took me on south, hunting along the way, working the hides to trade for things we needed. One of those things was a Bible. After that it was reading lessons along with the hunting. We moved around the back country, Virginia, Carolina, sometimes farther west. After a time we came down the Watauga to Sycamore Shoals. Reckon that’s as much home now as any place.”

  Mr. Bird fell quiet, elbow propped on a knee, chin braced in his hand. Tamsen was holding on to the end of a braid she didn’t remember plaiting. He bestirred himself, drawing one of his bags close to take out a coil of rawhide. With his knife he cut a piece and held it out. She tied off her braid, still caught up in his story. “Have you tried to learn who your parents were?”

  “Split Moon and Red-Quill-Woman were my parents.”

  “I meant your white parents.”

  He smiled faintly. “I know who you meant. Mind you, I was only ten when we left the Shawnees. Too young—or too Shawnee—to care about white parents I couldn’t recall.”

  “Don’t you wonder now?”

  “ ’Course I do. But Cade reckons anyone—anyone Shawnee—who knew where I came from is likely dead.”

  Leaving him with a borrowed name and no ties to his blood kin, whoever they had been. Tamsen couldn’t help thinking it might be best he never knew the truth. Though she understood the burning need to know—raw and new as that need was in her own soul—she was tempted to ask if he’d ever thought he might not like what he found.

  He was watching her, looking as though he, too, debated saying something more.

  “Aye,” he said. “I do wonder. Some nights I lie awake trying to grub up those memories. Anything that came before …” He didn’t finish but dropped his gaze.

  “Before Cade?” she asked, thinking she knew why he’d faltered. He looked up, surprised by her question. Maybe even chagrined.

  “He’s been good to me, has Cade. He told me once … something out of the Bible. Goes along the lines of ‘The LORD is my inheritance’ or maybe ‘my portion.’ Therefore will I hope in him.”

  It was a consoling thought. Even so, he’d admitted to wondering after all these years.

  “How long ago was it,” she asked, “when you stopped being Shawnee?”

  “Lenawe nilla,” he said, his gol
den eyes fixing her across the fire. “I never said I stopped being Shawnee.”

  She stared, thinking he jested. He held her gaze, letting her see he didn’t.

  “It’s going on thirteen years since we left them. More’n half my life ago.”

  He was only three and twenty. She’d thought him older.

  “Why didn’t—,” she began, but Mr. Bird cut her off.

  “Let the past bide. Now you’re dry and fed, there’s a talk more pressing we need to have.”

  “He’s saying you abducted me?”

  “Does it surprise you all that much?”

  The blood had drained from Tamsen’s face, hearing what Mr. Bird had learned from his foster father, detained in Morganton with their settler party long enough to be questioned by her stepfather and Ambrose Kincaid. She was pursued, but at least Mr. Parrish hadn’t learned Mr. Bird’s identity—only what had been told him by the trapper who’d given them the deerskin.

  Mr. Bird was watching her across their little fire while she absorbed the news.

  “What must we do?” she asked, feeling the dark press in with more malevolence than moments ago.

  “I take it you still don’t want to be found?”

  As if there could be any doubt. “Not by either of them.”

  “Then there’s two things we can do,” he said, so readily she knew he’d been thinking hard on the subject. “Make for our place, mine and Cade’s. It’s off the beaten way. We’d be safe there for a time, at least. Or we can stay in these mountains, hide out, let the snow seal us in somewhere. It’ll be rough, but I’d look after you, keep you warm, fed.”

  “Would it be just the two of us?”

  “Aye. Like as not. Unless Cade finds us.”

  Tamsen drew her knees up, hugging them close, sobered by the realization of how much Mr. Bird had risked in aiding her. That he’d offered his help before she’d thought to seek it didn’t ease the sense of obligation rising up through her grief and fear.

  “Back in Morganton … why did you help me?”

  “You needed me.” His reply came quick enough, but not before she caught something guarded sliding across his eyes. She waited, but that seemed all he meant to say on the matter.

  Did he see himself a knight to her rescue? A knight in greasy buckskins? The price he could pay for his chivalry must be a mite higher than he’d bargained for.

  “We’re not going anywhere till morning,” he said. “Let’s see what wisdom the sun brings. You be praying on it, all right?”

  He would be, his expression told her plain.

  Wrapped in her cloak and a blanket sent by Cade, Tamsen lay curled on her side beneath the pine shelter, still damp around the edges from the rain. Mr. Bird stayed by the fire. For a time she watched him through half-lidded eyes. The shirt she wore smelled of him, and his horse. She turned her face into the arm cradling her head, cheek against the rough sleeve, and stared at the strip of starry sky visible above distant peaks.

  Somewhere far off, a wolf howled. Closer by, an owl screeched. Neither gave her more than a start. Not when Mr. Bird didn’t flinch or even lift his head as the fire sank to embers at his feet. She felt safe with him, in a way she hadn’t under the shingled roof of her stepfather’s house in Charlotte Town. It was long since she’d trusted in a man, but she hadn’t forgotten what that felt like.

  Did she trust Mr. Bird, upon so brief an acquaintance? He’d snatched her out of a horrifying situation, risking his own well-being. He’d guided her across mountains, fed her, comforted her, saved her from drowning, and at every turn given her the thing she’d longed for since her stepfather first mentioned the name of Ambrose Kincaid in the same breath as marriage—freedom to choose the shape her future would take. Or as much freedom as circumstances allowed.

  Yet still … there lay the problem. Long before she’d understood the purpose, she’d been shaped with one aim in mind: marrying above her station in order to improve Hezekiah Parrish’s lot. In the dark above the draw where her life had nearly ended, she lay thinking that, if not for Mr. Bird, she’d have died without ever truly knowing herself, what she was capable of becoming. She felt a stirring at the core of her being. What it was exactly she couldn’t yet say. It was fragile, still encompassed by grief. But it was there, taking root inside her like the tiniest of promising seeds. Maybe it was hope.

  And there was another stirring. One of obligation, tinged with guilt. Willing or no, Mr. Bird had been dragged into her sorrows. The threat of an abduction charge overshadowed him now. In her choosing which way they went from there, could she do anything to help him in return?

  Opening her eyes a last time before sleep claimed her, she saw him by the firelight, still sitting. Maybe still praying.

  I do trust him.

  Perhaps it was this revelation coming on the edge of sleep that sparked the notion, which in turned kindled a plan. A plan that—if Mr. Bird could be made to agree to it—might save them both from the pursuit she feared was bound eventually to overtake them.

  Tamsen Littlejohn was silent through breakfast. She was silent when she went into the trees to don her clothing while he dismantled the shelter and covered all trace of their camp. Though the day promised fair, she came back swathed in her cloak, returning his shirt and breeches. Still she said not a word.

  When the horse was loaded and there was no more to do but put her in the saddle and start out, Jesse handed her box into her keeping. “You decide what you want to do?”

  “I have.” She licked her lips and raised her chin, dark eyes wide and direct. “But first I need to ask you a question or two.”

  “All right,” he said cautiously.

  She pulled in a breath, then asked, “Are you given to hard drinking, Mr. Bird?”

  He raised a brow. “No ma’am. Cade don’t touch the stuff, and I rarely do.”

  She gave a nod, as if his answer satisfied. “Have you ever hit a woman?”

  Both brows soared. “Never in my life. And never mean to.”

  “Good,” she said, leaving him mystified as she plowed ahead. “One thing more. You’ve quoted Scripture and told me Indian legends. Does that make you a Christian or a heathen?”

  “I know for a truth it don’t make me either one. A man can be a Christian and tell the stories of another people. Or a heathen and quote Scripture, for that matter.”

  She considered that, her full bottom lip drawn between pretty teeth. “But are you a Christian?”

  “With all my heart, soul, and strength,” he said. “Now how ’bout you answering my question? What have you decided?”

  She raised her chin a fraction higher. It gladdened him to see her spirit emerging from the shock and grief that had wrapped her like a mountain mist since Morganton, but she had him flummoxed if he could guess what the next words out of her mouth would be. Would she choose west to Sycamore Shoals? North into—

  “I’ve decided I want you to marry me—if you would, that is. If you think it would help matters for the both of us.”

  Good thing he’d already handed her the box, else he’d have dropped it where he stood. “You …” He sucked in air, having forgotten to breathe. “What?”

  Her cheeks bloomed, but her tone held firm. “You can’t be charged with abducting me if I’m your wife—by my consent.”

  “But we don’t … I never thought …” Words failed him. The plain truth of it was he had thought—someday, God willing. But he’d imagined himself doing the proposing on that someday. While he admired her gumption and plain speaking, she fair made his head whirl. There she stood like a storm’s calm center, while the mountains and their future and his heart spun ’round her. And he hadn’t even brought up the murder charge. Maybe she didn’t need to know about that. Not if the thought of him branded a kidnapper had brought her to this.

  The spinning stopped, leaving his heart thumping out an eager beat like the call of drum and fire. He closed his eyes for a ten count, gathering his wits.

  “Can I ask
you something afore I give an answer? Why didn’t you want to marry that planter?”

  Her brows flicked in surprise. “He reminded me too much of Mr. Parrish.”

  “In what way?” Jesse’s mind darkened with suspicion. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  “He struck a slave in front of me. Struck him for seeking his aid to help another of his slaves, one who’d been badly harmed.” She opened her mouth to say more, then closed it and looked aside at the horse, raising a hand to stroke its flank.

  “Your stepfather owns slaves,” Jesse said. “I saw ’em.”

  “Dell and Sim. They ran away.”

  “Still running, to Cade’s knowing.” He saw her satisfaction at the news, a bright flicker amidst the shadow of more troubling thoughts. “Is it the violence you objected to or the slavery?”

  “Both. You don’t own slaves, do you?” She narrowed her eyes, as if to shield them from his scrutiny. He couldn’t guess what she might be holding back on the subject of slaves, but he sensed there was more.

  “I don’t. Wager you’d reckon me a poor man.”

  “There is worse than being poor, Mr. Bird.” She drew nearer, close enough that he could have touched her had he dared. “Is there a church or courthouse west of these mountains?”

  “Several of both,” he said, feeling the spinning start again. “Then I’ll stand in whichever you wish and say that marrying you is my choice.”

  She pressed her lips tight. Her fists curled at her sides. Jesse drew a steadying breath. He wanted to take her in his arms and show her in no uncertain terms the choice his heart had made in Morganton, seconds after meeting her gaze. But there was nothing intimate in this for her. Every resolute inch of her warned him to not presume otherwise. Even so, how was he to say no to this? Ought he to say no? Or was this the Almighty’s doing, bringing them together this way?

  He liked that last thought. Liked it with all his might.