The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  After they had spoken their vows, Luther Teague put a hand to their bent heads and spoke a blessing, a prayer for safety, as they held each other, Jesse feeling the beat of Tamsen’s heart against his own, knowing by then his arms were the only thing holding her upright.

  The preacher had been right, all those weeks ago. It was worth waiting to know she’d married him for the wanting of him, first and foremost. He’d seen it in her eyes when she gave her ultimatum … or proposal. I won’t set foot out of this cabin again till I’m a married woman. He’d gone to her, touched her face, her hair, then led her into the Teagues’ bedroom where he found the promised shirt waiting for him.

  Alone, she’d turned to him and said, “Don’t ever keep a thing like that—the murder charge—from me again, Jesse. Just don’t. I want to be in this with you, right beside you in everything. I’m stronger than I look.”

  “You are,” he’d said, then taken her in his arms, felt her lips press against the skin of his chest. “Let’s pray there never is another thing like this for us, but aye, no more secrets between you and me. From this day forward.”

  From this day forward.

  He listened now to the Teagues murmuring in the room beyond, to the pop and hiss of the fire, to Tamsen’s breathing, till he couldn’t stand it anymore and pressed his lips to the spot where her shoulder curved into her neck … and bit back a groan.

  Lying with her chastely was as much trial as pleasure, but they’d another journey ahead of them, in the cold and snow. She needed sleep. Once they were settled again, they’d have their time … But she smelled so sweet, and the touch of her was making his nerves sing, and he couldn’t stop himself nuzzling his face against her hair, pressing another kiss behind her ear.

  She stirred beneath his arm, murmured something he didn’t catch. “What did you say?” he whispered near her ear.

  She shifted onto her back. Her eyes opened, looking into his, tiny flames reflected in their depths. She reached up and touched his face. “Did I ever say it?”

  He pressed her fingers to his lips. Her eyelids drooped, as sleep sought to claim her again. “Did you say what?”

  Beneath the quilt she shifted against him, making herself comfortable. Making him stifle another groan.

  “Did I say I love you?”

  “First words out of your mouth, when I found you.” He kissed her brow. The tip of her nose. “I love you too. Go back to sleep.”

  Hours passed over them. The fire settled and sank. The cabin grew cold. When he could wait no longer, he kissed her gently until her eyes fluttered open. “Wake up, Mrs. Bird. Time for us to fly again.”

  Snow lay six inches deep before Jesse could see well enough to ride. They’d left the Teagues’ place before dawn, making for the Holston, meaning to follow the river west toward the Overhill country. Till now Jesse had kept to a well-worn trace. It was easier on the horse but bad for leaving a trail, though the rising sun was hidden behind ragged clouds not done with spitting snow. He prayed their back trail would fast be covered. He needed to put better distance between them and Sycamore Shoals. They’d yet to meet another soul out so early. The snow they crossed bore only the tracks of critters. Still Jesse busied his eyes scanning ahead, the snow-laced trees to either side, the telltale signals of the horse, while his mind scoured its own landscape. Had Cade left Thunder-Going’s town? Had he reached their cabin, learned of Tamsen’s capture? How strange not being together on the hunt when the first snow fell …

  Would Dominic risk coming back to Sycamore Shoals or make for that muster against the Creeks in order to keep clear of Tate? What would Kincaid do when he learned Tamsen had eluded them again? Would he finally give up, even if Parrish didn’t?

  Jesse ground his teeth over having let Parrish go unscathed for what he’d done to Tamsen. There were times he wished he’d come to manhood among the Shawnees, that he could dance the war dance and strike the post, then go out and take bloody revenge on those who’d wronged him and his, and be counted right in doing so. It was a hard thing to beat down, that yearning to be the instrument of heavenly recompense, but he put the craving from his heart, remembering what manner of man he was. Remembering the God who wouldn’t be mocked, who in time would serve up justice, even if the law of the land failed in that regard.

  A twitch of the horse’s ears, swiveled to catch some sound behind them, sent a crackle of awareness up his spine.

  He didn’t look back. Or hesitate. “Hold tight.”

  Tamsen squeezed his ribs as he urged the horse through a break in a thicket, plunging down to a runnel the track had hugged. Ice cracked beneath them, then they were up into the hardwoods beyond. The maneuver wouldn’t aid them if pursuit was close, not with the snow declaring their passage clear as a blaze mark. He wove a path upslope through woods where the snow lay thin. When they broke out onto clear ground, he crossed it quick, glancing back before naked trunks enfolded them again.

  No sign yet, but he was nigh certain someone pursued.

  They rode on, Jesse urging the horse to a pace just short of reckless. Unable to hear above snow-crunching hooves, he kept watch on the horse’s ears and in moments lost all doubt.

  He pressed his calf against the rifle in its sling. He didn’t want to stop, didn’t want it to come to fighting. “Tamsen, can you look back without losing your grip on me?”

  The pressure of her arms shifted, then she stiffened against him. She’d seen their pursuers.

  He scanned the terrain for barriers to put between them. A boulder. Then a stand of birches. They struck a game trace he hadn’t expected, and he urged the horse to speed. It was snowing harder, enough to sift through tangled limbs.

  “How many?”

  “Two riders. Jesse, I think one of them—”

  She broke off at a shout behind them. A rifle’s report cracked the air. The horse missed a step, then surged forward, panic in the bunching of its muscles.

  Blood spattered Jesse’s hands. At first he thought Tamsen hit. Then he saw where the ball had grazed the top of the horse’s neck, taking out a chunk of cinnamon mane behind the ears. Blood writhed from the wound, drops of it flinging out behind. Beneath him powerful muscles churned. Hooves flung up earth and snow.

  Before them a clearing widened. Snow fell thick in the open. Across it pines beckoned. He took the chance of racing straight across, letting the horse have its head, praying he could slow it when they reached the trees. Praying for the snow to come hard.

  No more gunshots. No more shouts. They were into the pines. They were passing through them. Ahead the land rolled downward. Not too steep. If he angled it right, they could—

  The horse stumbled, pitching them both into empty air.

  Pain burst like a mortar in Jesse’s side. Then he was rolling downhill through snow and brush, a shattering in his ribs like the earth itself was stabbing him. The bole of a tree halted his tumble. Covered in snow, half-dazed, he caught a searing breath and looked frantically for Tamsen, spotting her higher up the slope, crumpled in a heap, dark against the white.

  Pain pierced his side, robbing him of breath, as he crawled up through snow and churned leaves, past the rock that had broken his fall, jaw locked to keep from groaning.

  Tamsen sat up as he reached her, disheveled, snow dusted, stunned, and unhurt. “Just bruised. I’m all right.”

  He looked for the horse next, expecting to see it lying on the slope, else crippled and struggling.

  It was neither. The beast stood on the crest above, reins trailing, peering down at them from the pines. It hadn’t fallen at all, nor lost any of its baggage. Just its riders.

  “Tamsen, could you—fetch him—down?”

  She caught the wince in his voice. “You’re hurt?”

  “Broke a rib, I think.” He forced himself to his knees, then his feet, where he pressed his arm to his side, struggled to breathe, and waited for a starry blackness to pass. When it did, Tamsen’s eyes were wide.

  “Jesse, your hands—you
r face. There’s blood!”

  “Not mine.” There was no taste of blood in his mouth. The ribs hadn’t pierced anything vital. He hoped. “Get the horse?”

  She struggled up the slope, caught the trailing reins, then picked a careful way back down, leading the animal. Jesse moved to meet her, gaze going to the crest of the slope with every other step. Nothing but pines. Snow fell thick and fast, laying down a fresh blanket over the churning they’d made in their tumble. He took the reins from Tamsen.

  “It’s been shot.” She looked at him in concern.

  “A graze. He’ll be all right. Can you mount up?” She made to do so, climbing awkwardly with no help from him. His hands were shaking. “Stay in the saddle,” he said when she started to make room for him.

  He glanced upslope again. Still no sign. That didn’t mean someone wasn’t casting about up there, seeking their trail. Wincing, he bent for a handful of snow, packed it, and handed it up. “Press it to the wound. It’ll slow the bleeding.”

  She did so, the snow and her hands quickly reddening. “Can you walk?”

  He looked away from her anxious gaze. “Got to.”

  He started out through the trees, all his thoughts on putting distance between his wife and their pursuers. Had she seen their faces? He would ask. For now all he could manage was one foot before the other, while daggers stabbed his side with every breath. He faced his mind forward, tried to make a plan. Escape first. Then shelter. Then … But whatever lay beyond that aim was lost in a haze of red.

  Shelter proved a limestone cave along the Holston, not near enough to the river to risk travelers stumbling across them. Little more than a dank recess in the face of a draw, it was still high and wide enough to let the horse within, and drew enough air through fissures in the rock for a small fire.

  Snow lay twice as deep on the ground as when they’d started out. Having trudged through it half the day in pain barely short of intolerable, Jesse groaned in relief once he lowered himself to the old bearskin Tamsen spread in the scanty space the cave provided.

  She saw to everything: horse, fire, provisions, though neither had appetite for the latter. Then she knelt beside him, spreading the sopping hem of her skirt and cloak before the fire. “Now you.”

  He eyed her resolute gaze. “Now me what?”

  “Your side. I mean to have a look at it.”

  “There’s no need.” Ignoring him, she tugged at his hunting shirt, trying to raise it. He caught her hand. Her fingers were icy. “Tamsen …”

  She was having none of his protest. Too tired to resist, he rucked up his shirts, letting her see the bruises darkening his ribs.

  “Likely just cracked, else I’d never have made it this far.” If it was worse than a crack, the bones could still do damage with all their moving about. Even if they didn’t, it wasn’t good. He’d cracked a rib before. It was going to be some time till he could draw a proper breath, or walk a full stride, or defend his wife as a man must in that country. Thunder-Going’s town was nearer than Chota, but at the rate he’d moved today, their provisions wouldn’t last. Worry dark as river flood engulfed him. “Nothing you can do for it.”

  She lowered his shirt and raised her eyes. “I can walk come morning, let you ride.”

  “No.”

  “Jesse, this isn’t the time for manly pride and stubbornness.”

  “Not pride,” he said too forcefully, and hissed in a shallow breath. “Not all pride. I couldn’t get myself into the saddle if I wanted to.”

  Come morning he’d be doing good to stand to his feet.

  Tamsen brushed his face with cold fingers, then turned from him to feed the fire. She arranged her cloak and lay down in the cramped space, shoulder brushing his. A shelf of rock rose between them and the horse, hobbled at the mouth of the cave, creating a heat reflector, warming the small space. He lay on his back, face turned toward her. She was between him and the fire, as he’d insisted. Its light limned her nose, the curve of her lips, her firm chin. A different sort of ache filled him.

  She turned her head, then rolled onto her side to face him. The fingers that touched his cheek were still chilled. He brought his hand up to hers, kissed her knuckles, warming them.

  “Tamsen …”

  “I think the storm’s passing. Perhaps it will clear up.”

  “Maybe so.” He stared at the fire shadows dancing across the cave’s pitched roof, where smoke collected before trickling out through the slope above. “What were you fixing to say, afore that shot?”

  “Oh,” she said, as if only now remembering. “It was Ambrose Kincaid—I saw his hair—and Dominic. Mr. Kincaid had hold of Dominic’s gun, as if to wrench it away.”

  The pair must have been on their way from Jonesborough and caught sight of them. Jesse pondered her words, listening to the fire’s snap, the horse shifting. It would’ve been Kincaid that shouted. Objecting to the reckless firing? That made sense, seeing as Dominic could’ve hit Tamsen—as he had their horse.

  Anger suffused him, but he willed thoughts of what he wanted to do to Dominic Trimble to the edges of his mind. They made it harder to breathe.

  Tamsen stiffened beside him. “Jesse. I just realized something else. I don’t have Mama’s box.”

  He hadn’t seen the box since back at the cabin, before he and Cade rode off with Catches Bears. “Did it fall out on the trace again?”

  “No. The Trimbles took it. And your pistol. It must still be in their cabin.”

  He reached for her hand, found it fisted. “I know what it means to you, being all that’s left of your parents. But whether you’re white or red or brown don’t matter to me. You know that. We’re married now. Nothing’s changing that.”

  She unclenched her fingers, letting him take her hand. “I know. But remember, papers aren’t all that’s in there. There’s the coins Mama hid away.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “Just shiny metal. They don’t mean nothing.”

  “Oh, Jesse. I wanted you to have them—for us. Our own land, if that’s what you wanted.”

  Lying in a cold cave with broken ribs, an injured horse, and a healthy fear of pursuit, he already felt himself a rich man.

  “I admit to entertaining the notion of late,” he said, hoping she heard the smile in his voice.

  “Mr. Parrish will have taken the coins. If he found them.”

  “And maybe Kincaid will get a look at your mother’s free papers and that’ll be the end of it for him. That’s worth a trunk of silver right there now, ain’t it?”

  By morning the storm had blown east, but the temperature had dipped. They woke shivering to an ice-encrusted landscape. In the gray of dawn, Jesse crawled from the cave, dizzy and sick, and vomited into the snow. The retching stabbed like knives. Judging by Tamsen’s pinched face, he hadn’t stifled the animal whimpers that rose with the bile.

  There was no blood at least, and the horse was faring better. The ball had grazed a raw scar, but the bleeding had stopped. Hobbled through the night, the horse had left the cave of its own accord to graze on winter-brown grass it had pawed through snow to reach. Tamsen saddled it in the time it took him to claw his way to his feet against the cave’s face, side screaming like his guts were shredding.

  On his feet, his vision darkened, swirling with spots. Dimly he heard Tamsen say his name, but he was lost in memories of when he’d broken his leg running from Cade, trying to get back to the Shawnees, across the Ohio. Cade had carried him agonizing miles before finding those settlers. What had happened to that family, to that boy whose name he’d borrowed …?

  “Jesse! Can you hear me?”

  He blinked into Tamsen’s frantic face with the sense she’d asked the question more than once. Bright points still danced at the edges of his sight. “I’m … all right.”

  “No, you’re not. Let’s stay put, for today at least.”

  He knew by reason a day would make no difference, yet he faltered at the fear in her eyes. Stay or go? Either posed a risk.
But staying would be giving in to weakness, and he couldn’t fail her. Not hours after he’d stood holding her before God and the Teagues, promising to protect and provide for her. Till death did they part.

  He wasn’t dead. Not yet. Though he longed to hunch into his pain, curl up and escape it if he could, he stiffened his spine. “I’m on my feet. The horse is saddled. Let’s go.”

  Tamsen didn’t budge. “What if I went for help? I’ll follow the river to a settlement—”

  “No …” He leaned against the cave entrance, trying to draw breath. Trying not to puke again.

  Tamsen crossed to the horse and set her foot in the stirrup. He lurched after her. She got her foot back down and ended up supporting him while he sagged against her. “You don’t know this country, Tamsen. You’re as like to find harm as help.”

  He groped for the saddle while she clutched at his sleeve, exasperated. “And you’re going to kill yourself out of stubbornness and—”

  The horse whinnied, high and loud—in greeting. From nearby another horse answered. Jesse thrust Tamsen behind him and reached for his rifle in the saddle sling. It caught on the leather halfway drawn. The horse shifted, and next he knew he was sprawled on his back, pain ripping through him, the rifle out of reach. Tamsen’s cloak swirled near. Then she cried out and ran out of his range of vision. He found breath enough to bellow her name, then nearly screamed with the agony that tore through him. She shouted again. They had her. Would they murder him or leave him to freeze while …?

  His ears at last made sense of what she was shouting. A name. Cade.

  Jesse raised himself enough to see his pa’s winter moccasins hit the snow in time to be rocked back as Tamsen threw herself into his arms. Cade grabbed her to steady them both.

  Astride another horse was Catches Bears, on his head a cocked hat with a rakish white plume of a feather, a blanket edged in red draping his shoulders.

  Jesse struggled to sit up, but his head spun and his ribs shrieked. He fell back in the snow, knowing Bears would never let him live this down—and frankly not caring. He closed his eyes and thanked the Almighty from the depths of his being.