The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  A bushy-tailed squirrel had gotten into the cabin.

  At first she didn’t move, disbelieving her eyes. A squirrel so brazen as to come into the cabin in the middle of the day? But there the creature was, flitting through the sun patch into the shadowed corner where Cade kept his things, including the sack of dried venison and parched corn he’d put together for their journey. She couldn’t let the squirrel get that corn, yet an irrational fear of its invasion held her frozen to the bench. For the tiniest instant, she wished Bethany were there.

  Then something rose up in her, an indignation so great it shoved such immobilizing thoughts from her mind. Hurling the cloak to the floor, she snatched up the nearest weapon to hand, a long-handled twig broom. With it she rushed the corner where the squirrel had retreated.

  It was no longer there. In the seconds she’d taken to grab the broom, it had scurried for the loft ladder and was climbing it like a tree, heading for their stores.

  “No, you don’t. Shoo—get out!”

  The squirrel froze at her advance, clinging to a rung halfway up. Brandishing the broom, she darted at it, hoping it wouldn’t climb higher but leap to the floor where she could swat it toward the door.

  The squirrel did neither. Defying expectation—not to mention gravity—it sprang straight up the cabin wall, streaking up and over, higher than her head, scuttling across the logs like a giant furry spider.

  Tamsen screamed. Broom extended, more shield than sword, she rushed after it. The squirrel leapt from the wall, narrowly missing her head, and dashed beneath the table.

  Tamsen followed, overturning a bench with a clatter. The squirrel darted from under the table and dove beneath her discarded cloak. With a bark of triumph, she threw down the broom and scooped the creature up, muffled in wool and rabbit fur.

  She had it trapped, but not subdued. It struggled wildly against the furs she’d painstakingly stitched. The horror of a live squirrel with teeth and claws in her hands overcame her nerve, and she hurled it away with a screech. Squirrel and cloak hit the puncheon boards and parted company.

  Surely now it would make for the door and escape.

  It didn’t. It darted back to Cade’s corner and whirled to face her, tiny legs splayed, chittering at her, scolding as if she were the intruder.

  Fury drove out fear, and maybe all good sense as well, for afterward she wondered why she didn’t pick up the broom again instead of going for Cade’s pistol, still on the table after last night’s cleaning.

  Perhaps by then she’d lost all sense of proportion.

  After snatching up the weapon like a club, she hurtled toward the squirrel. It made another dash—for the door. With a curdled scream Tamsen flew after it and nearly sprawled over her own feet at what she saw blocking the creature’s exit—a man, silhouetted against the sunlight. The breechclout, leggings, and long shirt were right for Jesse or Cade, but the head wasn’t crowned with a hat or thick hair pulled back. It was plucked smooth save for a crest on top, tied with feathers and something that flashed and glinted.

  As the squirrel ran a panicked circle in the doorway, the man spoke a word. It sounded like “see you.” He took a step inside the cabin, where she could see him better. Bronzed face. Black eyes. Silver earbobs. Tattoos. An Indian.

  The squirrel leapt.

  The Indian gave a startled cry, grabbing for the doorframe as the squirrel clawed its way up one fringed legging, launched itself into the air, and was gone—leaving Tamsen nowhere left to spend her fury save on this new and more ominous intruder.

  Still screaming, she came at the doorway, pistol raised, while a part of her brain calmly informed her that she’d been dead wrong about how fierce a full-blooded Indian could look. Then she swung the pistol at his head.

  He ducked. The pistol swept through empty air, throwing her off balance. A sinewy hand shot out and plucked the weapon from her grasp.

  Tamsen scurried to the corner where the squirrel had sought refuge. The Indian straightened and faced her, pistol clenched. She thought of trying to reach the hearth, grabbing for tongs, poker, frying pan—but it was too far. They stared at each other, Tamsen with her heart galloping, scalp prickling at sight of the gleaming hatchet at the Indian’s belt. He didn’t reach for the weapon. Aside from her pistol, he seemed to have no other on his person.

  “I do not know you, little squirrel chaser,” he said, wariness in his jutting face, something else dancing in his eyes. “But if I give this back, you promise not to hit me with it?”

  Grasping the pistol by the barrel, he offered her the stock. Struck dumb by his flawless English, Tamsen moved to take the proffered weapon. The Indian didn’t loosen his grip.

  “Or hit me with any other thing?” he added in addendum to his terms. “We have peace between us, you and me?” He waited until she nodded, then released the weapon to her.

  “Osda. Good. I seek Wildcat—known as Jesse Bird. This is his cabin still?”

  Tamsen worked her mouth, soundless as a landed fish at first. “I—He—You know Jesse?”

  The Indian’s brows were plucked clean, but the place where they should have been arched high. “You are his woman? Ha! A wildcat and a squirrel chaser have joined blankets? Or maybe it is two wildcats. Ha-ha!”

  It dawned on Tamsen then—what she’d seen dancing in the Indian’s eyes before was laughter. He was fizzing with it now, his whip-lean frame convulsing. Shock and bewilderment swirled around her like stars, but uppermost in her mind was relief—brought on as much by the sight of such a terrifying face crinkled in glee as his speaking Jesse’s name.

  “Osda,” he said again. “It is only too bad the squirrel got away.”

  Tamsen felt a smile tug her own mouth. Then a giggle rose in her throat, born half of hysteria, irrepressible.

  That was how Jesse found them, Tamsen clutching the pistol, giggling in helpless mirth with an Indian in the cabin’s front room.

  “Bears? What’re you doing here?”

  The Indian turned to Jesse, blocking the light from the doorway. “Siyo, brother. I am making peace treaty with your woman.”

  It was amazing, in a day of amazements, the shade of red that bloomed in Jesse’s face at the Indian’s words. And that he didn’t correct the assumption. “Sounds like you’re making headway. But how’d you know I had a woman here to be making treaty with?”

  “I did not know. It is why Creator sent me, maybe. My father sends me for another purpose.”

  “Sit and tell me about it.” Jesse glanced at Tamsen, the fierce color ebbing from his still-bruised face. He started to smile at her, perhaps in reassurance, then sniffed the air and looked to the hearth. Tamsen set down the pistol and rushed to tend the roasting meat as Jesse said to the Indian, “You’ve arrived in time to fill your belly, as usual. No dead cows this time. You’ll have to content yourself with venison.”

  “It is good,” the Indian said, then added with a sliding glance at Tamsen. “Since I cannot get squirrel.”

  She muffled the urge to break into hysterics again. Jesse looked between them, then shook his head and ducked out of the cabin. He brought in a rifle and bow, which the Indian must have left outside the door. As they were seated, Jesse explained for Tamsen’s benefit that Catches Bears was the brother of the woman whose wedding they were shortly to attend.

  She felt Jesse’s gaze as she took up a platter and began carving the venison to fill it.

  “You all right? You weren’t fixing to shoot Bears, were you?”

  “No. I meant to club him.”

  Bears threw back his head and laughed. “I will have a story to tell my father about this one. He will be amused.”

  Jesse glanced at her, but his attention was soon diverted as Bears explained his presence. His father, it fell out, had moved his family away from Chota. Others had followed. “Dragging Canoe has Chota’s warriors all stirred up,” Bears said. “We found a new place where my father thinks we can be left in peace. I am to show you the way.”

 
The Indian angled a look at Tamsen as she set the meat platter on the table, the teasing glint back in his eyes as he said to Jesse, “It is a thing to wonder at, finding such a woman as this to put up with you—despite your misfortune to be found by Shawnees before a Cherokee could come along and make a proper man of you.”

  Jesse suffered the ribbing with a wry smile. “I wonder at it with every breath I draw,” he said and leveled her a look of such unabashed admiration it rooted her to the floor, unable to look away.

  Cade came into the cabin then, breaking the moment, Tate Allard on his heels. Tamsen turned to fetch a pot of corn soup left from dinner, heart pounding with joy for what she’d seen in Jesse’s eyes, wishing desperately that her cabin wasn’t suddenly full of men, when she wanted only one.

  The clouds hugging the sodden hills had sunk as low as Charlie Spencer’s spirits. Bedeviled by a cold and cheerless rain the length of the Nolichucky, he, Kincaid, and Parrish had found no trace of Miss Littlejohn. Despite his vow to the contrary, Charlie had agreed to stay the course to Jonesborough.

  Inside the hamlet’s log tavern, a cup of applejack cradled in reddened hands, from his bench by the hearth, Charlie half-listened to the talk of patrons in the smoky taproom, while Kincaid showed ’round the portrait—a scene reenacted too many times to recount. Parrish had left them to it, gone to the courthouse to make inquiries.

  Sick to death of the fruitless mess, Charlie sent his thoughts scouting down other trails, one of which, to his surprise, still headed east—down the Yadkin River to his farm in the Carraways. It was years since he’d seen it, tucked up in those hogback ridges rising from the piedmont … But the Holston, the long hunt, buffalo, beaver, bear … that was the second trail unspooling before him. Yet the more Charlie gazed down it, the fainter it grew. He faced his mind east, considering. He’d dipped deep into his supplies, but there was the promised payment from Kincaid to make it up. Maybe wintering back east wasn’t a bad proposition. Might be right peaceful after the past few weeks.

  Going east to find peace and solitude—who’d have thought such a notion would cross his mind? Maybe fire and applejack had fuzzed his thinking. He ought to go outside, clear his head. Too much damp hide and woolens stinking up the place.

  “Spencer!”

  Kincaid stood over by the cage bar, next to a table where a man and woman sat, grizzle headed both, gesturing as if at odds. Charlie thought at first it’d been more time and breath wasted. Then he knew their luck had changed. Kincaid wore the look of a man shaken from fretful dreams.

  Charlie crossed the room, cup in hand. Half-cleaned stew plates and crumbled bread littered the table. At the edge of the boards was Miss Littlejohn’s face, staring up from its tiny oval frame.

  “She was there,” the woman was saying, not for the first time, going by her tone. Fleshy cheeked and sharp nosed, she jabbed the board next to the miniature. “Perched on the end of that bench inside the door.”

  The man grimaced, showing a string of meat stuck betwixt his teeth. “Which time? We been to that confounded courthouse thrice trying to square that deed.”

  “I don’t recollect which time, but I do mind her.” The woman’s gaze swept Charlie and fixed on Kincaid. “She’d a feller with her. I figured them for marrying, the way he was looking at her, all nervous-like.”

  Even had he taken leave to doubt Parrish’s version of events, Charlie hadn’t gone so far as to imagine Miss Littlejohn walking tamely into matrimony with the villain who’d whisked her away before her mother’s blood was cold. Neither had Kincaid, judging by the color draining from his face.

  “Don’t pay my wife no mind,” the man began, then jumped in his seat and scowled.

  Kicked under the table, Charlie reckoned.

  “Hush. Let a body think.” The woman squeezed shut her eyes, deepening their crinkles, till they popped wide again and she snapped her fingers. “The day Colonel Tipton raided the courthouse. That’s when we seen her. Long about the end of September, ’twas.”

  The man stopped scowling and ogled the portrait, tongue working at the meat in his teeth. “Hang on; maybe I do recall. But the girl I seen weren’t all done up like that.”

  “That’s right,” the woman said. “She was got up plain as a Quaker. Not with that fancy-dressed hair and silk and all. She’d moccasins on her feet.”

  So he’d been right about that deerskin, Charlie thought. A small thing to take satisfaction in, but it weighed on him, his having led Kincaid and Parrish so far astray at first. And if the girl had married her kidnapper, willing or no, he supposed that was partly his blame. Miss Littlejohn might be lost to Kincaid—that’d depend on what sort of man he proved once they saw the feller who killed her ma strung up.

  “If’n that was your girl we seen,” said the man at the table, “no telling where she and that feller went, or if they got their business seen to. Like my wife says, Tipton came with a passel of Carolina boys and raided the place, directly we left. If there was any papers signed, they’ll be long burnt to ash.”

  “Nobody took lasting hurt,” the woman added, seeing Kincaid’s alarm. “Reckon her man got her out ’fore things turned ugly. We’d have heard tell otherwise.”

  Parrish’s visit to the courthouse would be in vain.

  Kincaid drew up straight, frustration chasing over his face. He took up the portrait and turned to speak to Charlie, then whipped his gaze to the tavern door, where a man had come in, pausing to shake the wet from his hat.

  Raining again was the thought at the back of Charlie’s mind. The front of it was fixed on the man—younger than Kincaid, sandy headed, blue eyed, lean. Naught to make a body stand at gaze or his face go chalky like Kincaid’s was doing.

  The man looked up, locked eyes with Kincaid, and went every bit as white and still. Then he lunged for the door he’d just come through. Kincaid was steps behind him, shoving the portrait into his coat, leaving the couple at the table staring, mouths agape.

  Charlie put his to better use. “That who ye seen with Miss Littlejohn, by chance?”

  “No,” the man said. “That’s Dominic Trimble, from over Sycamore Shoals. Thought the other fellow hailed from Virginy. What’s he got against Trimble?”

  Charlie plunked his cup on the bar and went to find that out.

  It was raining again, a mizzle so fine it clung to the skin, drifting rather than falling, but Charlie ceased to notice once he spotted the grappling figures.

  Trimble, caught midflight at the hitch-rail, broke free and sprinted ’round the side yard, Kincaid on his heels. The dogs rose up excited, ready to abandon the mules Charlie had set them to guard. He shot them a collective “Stay!” and hotfooted it ’round the building to see Kincaid snag Trimble in the rear yard. Paying no heed to dignity or mud, he wrestled Trimble down and pinned him, forearm across his neck.

  “Where’s the other one—your brother?” A wheeze came from Trimble’s mashed throat. Kincaid eased up. “Where?”

  Trimble’s face contorted as he sucked in air. “Don’t know—get off me, Brose!” The younger man twisted in the mud but couldn’t break Kincaid’s hold.

  Few were about in the dismal weather, but even in the rear yard, they were drawing more of an audience than Charlie. Kincaid lurched to his feet, dragging Trimble up with him. Both were mud-plastered, bristling like tomcats, hats on the ground. Trimble sported a freshly cut lip, but this wasn’t the first scrape he’d been in of late. Charlie hadn’t noticed inside the tavern, but now made out the bruise fading around one eye. A cut through an eyebrow looked to be inflamed.

  Trimble spat a gob of blood, glaring at Kincaid. “What took you so long?”

  Kincaid clutched the front of Trimble’s soiled coat, cold fury in his face. “My business here wasn’t to do with you—until now.”

  “Dom!” Another man came pushing through the small ring of onlookers, brushing roughly past Charlie. He halted when Kincaid turned. Recognition washed the newcomer’s features, and the same urge to run that ha
d come into Trimble’s eyes. This one didn’t scratch that itch.

  “Hey, Brose,” he said, like one braced for a blow long feared. “How’s things back home? Your pa still looking to wring our necks?”

  Parrish found them out back of the tavern in time to help detain the Trimbles, who Kincaid took no joy in making known to them.

  “Horse thieves, the pair. I know several court justices who’d appreciate knowing where these hell-jacks have been hiding the past few years—after Alexander Kincaid is through taking out our loss on their hides.”

  Flinching at that, the brown-haired one, Seth, said, “That’s your grandpa, ain’t it? What about your pa? It was his horse we—”

  “Shut up!” Dominic growled, though he was kept from reaching his brother, who was held firm by Parrish.

  Kincaid leveled his glare at them with equal loathing. “Collin Kincaid is dead. But your crime against my family is very much alive in my grandfather’s mind.”

  Despite his bloodied lip, Dominic smirked. “He’s got to be eighty, if he’s a day. It was your pa scairt us out of Virginy, but now he’s gone, can’t you just—”

  Kincaid backhanded him across his broken mouth. Seth made a garbled sound and struggled, but Parrish gripped him with surprising strength.

  Dominic let the blood run down his chin. He’d quit his smirking, but his eyes mocked. “Seems you’ve inherited the family temper, much as you always claimed otherwise.”

  Kincaid’s mouth thinned. Before he could speak, Parrish cut in. “What is it you plan to do with these two? We’ve precious little season left before winter and no leads on my stepdaughter’s whereabouts.”

  Most of their audience had drifted away, gone back in out of the rain once the drama sputtered out. Charlie stepped forward from the few that were left, clearing his throat. “Well, now, looks like maybe we have.”

  Parrish’s gaze sliced toward Charlie. “Are you telling me you’ve found Tamsen?” He shoved Seth Trimble away as if he was of no further consequence. “Why, then, are we wasting time with these ruffians?”