The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  Reminded of that day, Jesse glanced at the lodge where Tamsen was tidying away the day’s work, where soon they would seek the warmth of their bed, weighing that against a cold trek through snow to bring home buffalo meat. Turning back, he caught Bears in the act of rolling his eyes.

  “I see it will be some time yet before you can be torn from the arms of your wife. So it was with my sister’s husband. Useless for two moons at least. But I will take the horse.”

  Tamsen had fallen asleep to the howling of wolves. Their distant voices, at once blended and discordant, followed her into slumber to haunt her dreams through the night, jarring her awake at last and resolving themselves into the voices of men, speaking in low tones outside the lodge. She lay still, listening. One of the speakers sounded like Bears. But that couldn’t be right. Bears had taken Jesse’s horse to bring in a buffalo and wouldn’t be back until the morning had passed. She put out a hand to wake Jesse. He was gone.

  A hint of dawn streamed through the half-covered smoke hole in the roof. Below it the fire was nearly out. The air felt like ice crystals in her lungs as, wrapped in her cloak, she knelt to feed the fire, still listening. She recognized Jesse’s voice now, and it was Bears. They were conversing in Tsalagi.

  With the fire going, she tied her moccasins and leggings and hurried to the doorway, nearly colliding with Jesse coming in. She looked past him, but Bears was gone into the graying dawn. “He’s back awfully soon,” she began, but Jesse took her by the arm, his gaze stricken. Alarm flared beneath her breastbone. “What is it?”

  “My horse is dead.”

  Shock gripped her. “How? Is Bears all right?”

  Jesse led her to the fire. He’d gone outside in only a breechclout but didn’t reach for shirt or leggings as he settled on the edge of the sleeping platform. She draped a fur around his shoulders. His hand came up to hold it there as he stared into the flames. “Bears met that hunter at dusk yesterday. It was bitter cold. There were wolves—you hear ’em in the night?”

  “Wolves killed it?” She shuddered, not wanting to picture such a horrible end for the horse.

  “No.” Jesse sounded as if he wished they had. “Bears and the other hunter were working to finish the butchering in a meadow where the herd had been grazing. They had my horse hitched to a travois, nearby.” A shiver passed over him, raising gooseflesh up his legs. “There was a shot. From a ridge to the east.”

  It had taken his horse between the eyes, he told her, dropping it where it stood. Jesse met her gaze, eyes darkened to amber in the firelight. “They never saw the shooter but didn’t stay to make themselves easy targets. They took the other horse, left the rest of the meat, and ran. Bears traveled through the night to get back.”

  Tamsen felt grief for the animal that had carried her over the mountains, into another life. More than sorrow clouded Jesse’s gaze. The look in his eyes made Tamsen’s heart thump with foreboding. “There’s more?”

  “Bears thinks the shooter didn’t aim for him or the other hunter. My horse was the target.”

  “Why would anyone shoot a horse and not …?”

  “The Indians with it? To send a message. Dominic or Seth … either of ’em knows my horse on sight.”

  There was a thump on the doorpost. With a rush of cold air, Bears stuck his head past the drape, panting for breath as though he’d run back to their lodge.

  “Cade is here,” he said. “Men on horses come behind.”

  They’d dressed in haste, Tamsen donning her doeskin tunic and skirt over her shift. The frosted ground beneath her moccasins felt hard as fired clay as she ran to keep pace with Jesse. Morning was brightening around them, but clouds were coming in fast, obliterating the fading stars. Outside lodges, people stirred. Voices queried as they made for Thunder-Going’s lodge, where Cade was unloading one of the packhorses. They converged there with the few warriors not out on their winter hunts—a grand total of three, counting Bears. Tamsen glanced aside as White Shell appeared at her shoulder. She’d brought her grandmother out of her winter house, blanket wrapped, to hear what news Cade brought.

  “They’ve come. Kincaid, the Trimbles, maybe Parrish too, with half a dozen men they’ve rounded up besides.” His gaze swung to Tamsen. “They’re searching the Overhill towns, showing around that portrait of you.”

  Tamsen’s stomach lurched. “Do they know we’re here—here and not some other village?”

  “My horse,” Jesse said. “They’ll know I’m close by, and you with me.” He grabbed for Cade as he straightened from tossing down the last of the hides. “How close?”

  “Very.” Cade’s face, shaded by the brim of his feathered hat, was as fierce and impassive as those around them taking in their words or listening while others translated. He turned to Thunder-Going. “We’ll go, and pray we don’t bring our trouble down on you. I leave you these hides.” He gestured to the pile outside the lodge door. “And the others I have stored here. What the other horse carries we’ll take.”

  Thunder-Going gave a short nod. “There are not enough of us to fight, even if you stayed, but still we will know nothing of you here.”

  The two clasped arms.

  “God be with you,” Cade told the older man.

  “As He is with you.”

  It seemed to take a moment for Cade to register Thunder-Going’s words. When he did, Tamsen saw a thing that by now she never truly expected to see. A full-blown grin crossed Cade’s features, blazing joy in its wake.

  Amusement lit Thunder-Going’s eyes. “For many moons now.”

  “Then I leave you with peace in my heart.” Features radiant despite their urgency, Cade turned to remove the packsaddle from the horse, meeting Jesse’s gaze. “We got to move fast while we’ve still a lead. Pack your things and—”

  A new disturbance across the town—barking, shouting—drew their attention. Tamsen spotted a figure coming toward them, running full out. It was White Shell’s husband, who had left to hunt days ago, coming with his rifle held low. The crowd of mostly women and children outside Thunder-Going’s lodge parted to admit him. Jesse grabbed Cade’s horse as it shied from the arrival, who staggered in, gulping breath and releasing it in clouds. White Shell was at her husband’s side, speaking rapidly in Tsalagi. He responded, still gasping. She raised her face and looked at Tamsen, her features frozen. “There is no time. They are just behind him. A mile, maybe.”

  White Shell’s husband had spotted their fires across a valley and raced to warn the people, who were already melting away in the burgeoning dawn, racing for livestock, vanishing into lodges and hurrying out again with packs, baskets, bundled children. Before Tamsen could grasp what was happening, Jesse had her by the hand, running. With her heart pounding and her blood racing, she no longer felt the brutal cold.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Same as us. Getting out of trouble’s path.”

  “Everyone?” Her foot hit an icy patch, but Jesse bore her up, pulling her along. They reached their lodge. He held aside the door drape.

  “There ain’t enough men left to put up a fight. If all the hunters were here … but I wouldn’t risk their lives. They need every man they got to survive the winter. Best thing we can do for them is clear out—fast.”

  Tamsen needed no further urging than the panic nipping at her heels. Inside, Jesse doused the fire with creek sand. He donned his buckskin coat over his hunting shirt, while she wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. There was jerked venison in a knapsack; Jesse’s rifle, bullet-bag, and horn; his bearskin rolled tight and tied to shoulder straps.

  “Leave the rest,” he told her from the doorway. “God willing, we’ll be back for it.”

  Looking up at him, for a moment she was thrust back across time and distance to Morganton, to Jesse standing in another doorway urging her to haste, her mother lying dead, her dazed and brittle thoughts scattering like leaves on a fearful wind. She heard hooves on icy ground, the snort and blow of horses. The sound froze her until Cade�
��s voice called from outside.

  “Jesse—now!”

  Tamsen forced her limbs to move, legs to carry her out into the cold. Cade was in the saddle, holding the reins of both packhorses, one still loaded. They’d be riding bareback.

  Jesse hoisted her astride the horse, then handed up his rifle and mounted in front of her, agile as a panther.

  Women and old men were leading children and horses up into the surrounding forest, where little shelter waited. Blackbird, led by White Shell, turned back at the forest’s edge, seamed face drawn in frustration as though she still felt the call of the warrior beating within her withered frame. White Shell looked across the clearing at Tamsen. The young woman’s fear snapped on the air like the breaking of creek ice.

  The same fear twisted Tamsen’s belly.

  “We can make for home,” Jesse was saying. “Gather what’s left there, head into the mountains.”

  Tamsen broke White Shell’s parting gaze to see Cade shaking his head. “We won’t go back to Sycamore Shoals.”

  “We can’t light out in this cold with nothing but our rifles and a stack of hides,” Jesse argued as the horse beneath them fidgeted.

  “We won’t go back,” Cade said again.

  The horse danced sideways, made nervous by their tension. Jesse fought it around to face Cade. “Why?”

  “Thanks to the Trimbles, they’ve put a name to your face. Every county sheriff’s looking out for you. Franklin, Carolina both. You can’t go back to Sycamore Shoals or show your face anywhere Kincaid’s been.”

  “Don’t you mean Parrish? Or is there something ’bout that redheaded varmint you ain’t told me?”

  “Jesse!” Cade’s tone was harsher than Tamsen had ever heard. “We got seconds to set our course.”

  Jesse relented, his voice edged too. “Make for the Cumberland Gap?”

  Cade looked at Tamsen, misgiving in his eyes. The horse shifted again, swinging her nearer. “Haven’t I proved I can live anywhere I must?”

  She expected argument, but it didn’t come. Perhaps she looked the part of a frontier wife, dressed in deerskins, clutching her husband’s rifle. Jesse chose that moment to pluck it from her grasp and settle it across his thighs. She raised her chin and aimed every ounce of determination she’d earned at Cade. It must have been enough.

  “Kentucky, then. Something happens, if we’re parted, make for that bend in the Holston—last winter’s camp.”

  “I mind it.” Jesse kicked the horse to follow Cade through the emptying village.

  They were heading into the wilds again, this time in the heart of the coldest winter Tamsen could remember. As were Thunder-Going’s people. Guilt thickened in her throat at the memory of White Shell and Blackbird fleeing to the woods. She pressed her face to the bearskin crossing Jesse’s back as he guided the horse between trees, leaping deadfalls, skirting those too large to clear, following Cade along the base of a bluff, then up the side in a break where a deer path climbed.

  They’d gone but a mile through ridge-cut forest when Cade pulled up, a hand raised. Jesse reined in. Tamsen’s grip on his waist tightened to keep from sliding off the saddleless horse. He and Cade swung their rifles, pointed back over an icy stream they’d just crossed. Jesse heard the branch-cracking thud of a rider coming fast, heedless of stealth. He raised his rifle, finger twitching on the trigger.

  A shout rang out. Horse and rider came into view. Jesse whipped the rifle’s barrel skyward. “Bears!”

  Catches Bears hurtled his horse across the stream. “They come behind me. S-qui:ya. He-ga!” Too many. Go!

  They whirled their horses, Tamsen clutching Jesse hard enough to pain the ribs he’d broken weeks back. Bears flew past them. They followed, letting the Cherokee pick their route through pine thickets and hardwoods, fallen timber and stones. A half mile on, another shout rose behind them. Jesse glanced back to see the trunk of a beech explode in a shower of bark yards from Cade, bringing up the rear with the packhorse.

  He could hear their pursuers as Bears led them up a thinly wooded slope, across the crest of which a massive sycamore lay fallen in twisted chunks over outcrop rock, skirted by a growth of laurel. It was a natural palisade, thicker than a fort wall, yet when he saw what Bears intended, instinct screamed against it.

  Fight or flight. The impulses warred. But the riders were too close to elude. They’d make a stand, try to warn them off. Failing that, pick them off.

  Cade and Bears had dismounted. Jesse slid down and pulled Tamsen to her feet, shoving the reins of their horse at her. Scanning their position, he saw no better cover for her than the looming wall of rock she sheltered behind. “Keep the horses near. They won’t bolt at gunfire.”

  “But if they do?”

  “Let ’em go. Stay in cover, no matter what happens.”

  She clutched his coat sleeve. Fear trembled her voice. “Jesse …”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her, hard and swift. “I love you.”

  Rifle in hand, he dodged a break between the rock and a section of the sycamore and crouched beside Cade. Back to the downed tree, he checked his priming, heaved in an icy breath, and whirled to take aim.

  Bears popped up from behind a stone several paces beyond Cade, aimed his rifle down-slope and fired, then ducked back to reload. The breeze bore sulfurous powder smoke across their faces, stinging Jesse’s throat.

  A shot from below nipped the stone that shielded Bears, sending slivers of rock flying. They missed Cade, crouched low to aim through a gap under the fallen sycamore, but struck the side of Jesse’s face like needles. One missed his eye by a hair. He swiped a hand across his stinging cheek, smearing blood.

  Another shot cracked. Cade’s rifle answered. Through the rising smoke, Jesse looked to Tamsen. She was pressed against the stone, white face staring from her hood. The horses shielded her from behind.

  Silence fell, ringing with gunfire’s echo. Smoke hung over the hilltop. Cade fished out ball and patch. “I hit someone. Winged or felled, I don’t know.”

  Jesse edged to the left, taking up position at the same gap Cade was using, gaining a better view of the terrain below. A drift of powder smoke marked where the last shot was fired. Rifle trained on the trees near the smoke, he looked for a scrap of clothing, a shift of movement. “They got to know Tamsen’s with us. They can’t be firing to hit.”

  “Maybe trying to flank us. Cut her out.”

  Like wolves with a herd.

  “I will see.” Bears started to rise, but Jesse waved him down.

  “Stay in cover,” he began, then Tamsen’s urgent voice made him look away from Bears.

  “Jesse! Let me go down to them.”

  He looked down-slope, pretending he hadn’t heard, chest constricted with fury and fear.

  “No,” Cade said for him, ramming patch and ball down the muzzle of his rifle.

  “We can’t keep running this way,” she persisted. “Let me go talk to—”

  “I won’t let you go to him.” Jesse pressed his shoulder against the bulwark of the sycamore and took his eyes off the forest below. “There’s nothing you can say would make me trust you to your stepfather.”

  Tamsen’s face was torn with pleading. “Mr. Kincaid may listen.”

  “Pa,” Jesse said, turning in desperation. “Maybe if I go down—”

  “No, Jesse,” Cade said with unsettling conviction. “That’s a worse idea yet. He’ll take you in custody for murder, abduction, whatever else Parrish wants, if he doesn’t kill you first. He’ll take what he wants—your wife—and won’t heed even her pleading. Not if he’s anything like—”

  Jesse was staring at his pa, baffled at how he could know such things, when another report shattered the cold. Not from below, but along the crest of the slope.

  Bears was no longer beside them. Jesse saw him several yards off, on his feet, spinning … falling. Shot.

  Rising to a knee in the rimed duff, he raised his rifle toward the distant telltale patch of smoke and f
ired. Whether or not he hit the shooter, there was no return fire. Bears was up on an elbow, trying to drag himself toward his fallen gun. Jesse started to go to him. Cade yanked him back.

  “Take her and leave. Before we’re surrounded.”

  Jesse jerked free. “Bears—”

  Cade grabbed him again, wrenching him nearly prone. “I’ll see to Bears.”

  It sank in like a dagger’s thrust, what his pa was telling him to do. “I’m not leaving you either.”

  There was no relenting in Cade’s face. Only his eyes showed any hint of what he’d settled with himself, what he was offering. “Get her away. I’ll hold ’em off.”

  Jesse felt his heart wrench. “Pa …”

  “I saved you for more than what you’ll get at their hands. Make for the Holston. God willing, you’ll see me there.” Cade thrust him toward the rock where Tamsen hid.

  “Wehpetheh!” he all but shouted.

  Go.

  Snow sputtered from the hurrying clouds as they reached the foot of the ridge, where cane grew tall, spreading away for a winding distance as the land dropped toward a frozen creek bottom. Jesse guided the cantering horse along its edge until they struck a game trail leading in.

  “Keep your knees in tight and hang on,” he told her and plunged them into the brake.

  Behind the shield of his back, Tamsen made herself small, arms around his waist, shoulders clenching at the crack of gunfire behind them on the bitter air.

  Even in the lowlying canebrake, the ground was iron hard, sheeted with ice that cracked beneath their passage. Jesse slowed the horse to a jostling lope, letting it pick the path—one Tamsen prayed wouldn’t peter out and leave them stranded in canes towering over their heads, growing too thick to see beyond a few yards in any direction.

  Another shot rang out. Though its distance was reassuring, anxiety for Bears—and gut-wrenching dread for Cade—gripped her. Jesse reined the horse to a walk and pushed aside a leaning cane. As they passed beneath, he put a hand over hers at his waist. “We’re clean away. You hear me, Tamsen? We’ll be all right.”

  She realized she was crying, that he’d felt her sobbing against his back. She dreaded asking. “Is Cade dead?”