The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn

by Benton, Lori

  She hauled back on the reins. Jesse slipped off the horse and took its bridle in hand. He walked them forward along the edge of a draw, scanning the trees enclosing them, pausing every few paces to listen. Tamsen’s heart bumped against her ribs, trapped and panicked. “What is it? Who is shooting?”

  Jesse didn’t answer. He led the horse on, making for a sheltered spot ahead where a pine on the lip of the draw had fallen against a neighboring tree. Its roots hadn’t pulled completely free of soil; the tree lived, creating a green, thick-needled wall. Jesse led them behind it. He reached for her then, touching her hand, squeezing her moccasined foot. She thought he meant to help her down, but he cautioned her to stay in the saddle.

  “Militia stopped at that farm overnight, a party out requisitioning for Sevier.” He tugged the dangling bearskin free and rolled it tight, tying it with whangs from his knapsack. She reached for the rug to sling around herself so he’d be less encumbered.

  “Sevier—Franklin’s governor?”

  “Aye. Just now he’s got John Tipton’s house surrounded, with Tipton holed up inside.” Jesse paused at another ragged volley of gunfire, far enough away to echo through the hills, near enough to make her flinch. “Maybe they’ve broke out. Or in.”

  It took her a moment to put the name of Tipton into proper context; Colonel Tipton, leader of the Old State faction, the man they’d seen in the Jonesborough courthouse, back in September. She shivered, certain the world had gone mad again with war, with every man at odds with his neighbor, red or white. “How close is Tipton’s house?”

  “Too close by the sound of things.” Jesse’s face was grim in the half light, wet from snow. “Whatever’s afoot, I’ve got to skirt us around it, get us headed north. With attention fixed down this way, maybe we can slip past Jonesborough and …”

  Jesse’s head lifted. Tamsen heard it too. Another horse, maybe more than one, coming behind them, snorting in the cold. And it wasn’t snowing hard enough to have covered their trail. She met his gaze. “The farmer?”

  “He didn’t have a horse. Scoot back.” Jesse handed up the rifle, then mounted in front of her. Before the horse could take a step, an explosion of noise rent the air.

  Jesse jerked against her.

  Tamsen nearly dropped the rifle but clung to it one-handed while the horse churned snow and pine needles and snorted clouds of breath. While Jesse fought to restrain it, she craned around his shoulder, looking for blood. And found it—soaking his thigh, bright against his legging.

  A voice shouted from beyond the leaning pine, sending waves of shock along her spine—a voice she’d last heard in a cabin near Sycamore Shoals. Dominic Trimble.

  “Jesse Bird! You hit?”

  Terror skittered down her limbs. “Jesse, you are. You’re bleeding.”

  His voice was tight. “A graze. Give me the rifle.”

  She handed him the weapon.

  “I reckon you winged him,” a second voice called—Seth’s, sounding well recovered from his own winging at her hands. “He ain’t took flight again!”

  Jesse cocked the rifle, aiming it back along the draw. Snow obscured any movement, else the pair was hunkered behind cover.

  “Where’s Kincaid?” Jesse shouted. Tamsen could detect no hint of pain in his voice now but knew he only masked it.

  “With us,” Dominic hollered. “He’s come for the woman you done stole out from under his nose twice now.”

  “If he’s there, let him speak!” Jesse edged the horse forward a step, peering through the snow-laden boughs, trying to pinpoint their location through the shifting curtain of white. “You’re lying. He wouldn’t shoot so near to Tamsen.”

  Silence.

  Finally Seth called out, “That was a warning shot. We ain’t going to hurt the girl, just give her over to Kincaid. He’s over with Sevier’s militia, waiting on us to flush you out.”

  “Militia that’s swarming these woods,” Dominic added. “They’re busy with Tipton, but they know to be looking for you. Ain’t no getting through ’em.”

  “There’s no getting through me for you,” Jesse called back. Tamsen could feel him shaking, though he was rigid with the effort to control it. “I won’t let ’em take you,” he said, gaze fixed down the barrel of his rifle.

  “Look, Jesse.” Seth’s voice cut through the blinding snow. “You’re a wanted man in most every county west of the mountains, but turn her over and we’ll let ye go. You can take your chances with the militia.”

  Tamsen felt the growl rise up from Jesse’s chest. “You’ll take her over my dead body!”

  She saw the flash in the pan as Jesse fired, felt the rifle’s kick through his shoulder as they were enveloped in the throat-stinging reek of burnt powder.

  There came a second blast, sounding farther away. At first Tamsen thought Jesse’s shot had echoed back from some nearby bluff, then realized a second weapon had fired hard on its heels.

  Jesse passed the spent rifle back to her, and the horse surged from cover. Clinging to Jesse, she struggled to prevent the heavy thing being snatched away by reaching brush. She risked a glance behind but could see no pursuit through the snow. Hanks of icy hair straggled across her face as her thoughts spun—half-formed, fragmented things. How could the Trimbles have found them? Had they been tracking them all the way from Thunder-Going’s town? Did it mean Cade and Bears were dead? Would this running and hiding never end? Would the snow never end? If anything, it was thickening, on the verge of becoming a violent blow.

  Jesse slowed the horse to a trot. He’d found a path, which quickly broadened to a wagon track, but it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. He reached back for the rifle, then dug in his bag for the means to reload it.

  Blood was spreading, darkening the buckskin covering his thigh.

  “Jesse, your leg. That’s no graze.”

  The crack of gunfire sounded again, a broken series of shots, rolling through the hills in echo. Jesse drew the horse up, turning a circle, scanning the forested slopes. The shouts of men—many men—mingled with the firing, indistinct in the falling snow. “God Almighty … where?”

  The shooting, the disembodied shouting, seemed to be all around them.

  From out of the confusion came the thud of a rider coming fast on the track behind. Jesse urged their horse on again, its hooves slipping in the snow, digging for purchase.

  “Peshewa!”

  Tamsen nearly lost her seat as Jesse wrenched them to a halt. She saw the rider emerging from the snow, tall in the saddle, black hat pierced with a hawk’s feather.

  “Pa!” Jesse reached for his father as he drew in his horse. The two clasped arms, beset by relief. “Bears?”

  “Alive when I left him. I’ve been on your trail since I got him back to his people.” Cade saw the blood staining Jesse’s leg and blanched. “Bad?”

  “Won’t credit my chances on foot. Long as I stay on this horse, I’ll do. Was it you shooting back there?”

  “I pinned ’em so you could slip free, but they’ll be coming.”

  Tamsen’s stomach lurched, the relief of Cade’s presence fading. The intermittent shots, the cries, the shouts hadn’t ceased. It was maddening, hearing but not seeing, fearing the impact of a stray ball at any moment. Or one not so stray.

  Cade turned his horse into the trees. Jesse followed behind but soon as he could urged his horse in close.

  “You know about Tipton?” Cade said.

  “We do. Tamsen—duck!” They bent in time to avoid being swept off the horse by a low bough, but the stock of Jesse’s rifle banged her nose. She hardly felt the impact for the numbing cold, but when she wiped a hand beneath her nose, it came away bloody.

  “I’ve been all over these hills looking for you,” Cade said. “Ran across Carolina militia coming down from our way. Tipton got word through the Franklin lines. Sounds like an all-out battle now.”

  How were they to keep clear of it? The question flashed through Tamsen’s mind, but t
he thought was driven out as shouts rose behind them. These voices she recognized. Seth and Dominic had found where they left the track. She squeezed Jesse’s ribs in her fright. “They’re right on us!”

  “Battle or no, we got to shake those two.” Cade plunged his horse down an incline to the bed of a narrow creek, even as a musket ball whiffled through the limbs above their heads. “Pray we find a way through this hell.”

  The riderless horse came plunging through the snowfall, reins trailing, sides heaving. At sight of them, it swerved with a plume of snorted breath and was gone again into the swirling white.

  Tamsen smelled the smoke of battle on the air.

  Seconds later, the first fleeing soldier blundered out of the swirl, dressed in butternut woolens. White-eyed, powder-blackened, he seemed barely to register them until he slipped and sprawled to a knee, crying out as Jesse wrenched the horse sideways to avoid trampling him. The man was up and running again.

  Another crashed through a stand of laurels, cursing, whimpering. They saw him weaving through the trees before the snow swallowed him as well.

  Gunfire continued, sporadic but unnervingly close, each shot a blow to Tamsen’s senses. She was first to spot the clearing ahead. “Jesse—look!”

  He saw where she pointed and called to Cade. Beyond a scrim of leafless trees, they could see the edge of a fallow field, a line of rail fence, and through the driving snow a log house in the distance, two-storied, outbuildings crowding close. Between the house and their position, a line of men was breaking, a few pausing to fire their weapons before turning to flee again. Straight into their path.

  Other figures gave chase, some streaming out of the house, some from the surrounding woods, mounted and afoot.

  “Back!” Cade shouted. “Go back!”

  A bullet spit past, cracking through tree limbs. A trio of horses, one mounted, raced into the trees, and a man, astonishingly barefoot, nearly collided with them running at cross direction. They whirled their horses to flee. Someone coming behind the barefoot man yelled Sevier’s name, but Tamsen hardly registered it. Her mind felt suspended, thoughts shuddering to a halt at the horror of having blundered straight into the battle.

  Not a battle anymore. A rout. And she couldn’t tell in which direction safety lay.

  “There!” Jesse pointed at a stony outcrop looming out of the snow—a refuge, at least while they gained their bearings. He groaned as he hit the ground but turned and pulled Tamsen from the horse. He hurried her to the lee of the rock before he staggered to the snow, clutching his rifle. Cade took the horses in hand. Jesse put his back to the rock and reloaded his gun. His fingers shook, lacking their usual smooth efficiency.

  Tamsen was shaking too, a bone-deep trembling she couldn’t restrain. She pressed against the stone, conscious of its lichened face, cold and rough and wet. In breaks in the gunfire, she heard the shouts of men in retreat and pursuit, the occasional scream of a horse. Twice, men ran past within yards. One paused behind a tree, knelt to aim, and fired toward the house. Then he was up and reloading as he vanished in the snow.

  Jesse sat pressed to the rock, rifle ready, wounded leg extended. Spots of crimson blotted the snow beside his thigh. Tamsen knelt, shielding the wound with her cloak. “Jesse, you’re still bleeding.”

  “Like a stuck pig.” The face he turned to her was fearfully leeched of color. She tried to spread the torn legging to see the wound, but he pushed her hands away. “Pa, what do you see?”

  Peering over the edge of the rock, toward the field and house, Cade shook his head. “Too little in this snow.”

  “Maybe if we try and circle the farm, just walk the horses … take it slow?”

  Cade put the reins into Tamsen’s hands. She stood to take them as he took her place in the snow beside Jesse. “I’m seeing to that wound first.”

  To Tamsen’s irrational vexation, Jesse didn’t protest Cade’s cutting open the legging to inspect the wound. She took the opportunity to get a look for herself, and her knees nearly buckled. The ball had passed across the muscle atop his thigh, but the scoring went deep.

  “Bloody mess,” Cade muttered, stripping down to the linen he wore beneath hunting shirt and coat. His tawny shoulders stippled against the blowing snow as he used the shirt to bind Jesse’s thigh. “Got to slow this bleeding, or you won’t make it far, whichever way we go.”

  Jesse’s jaw bulged as the binding tightened. By dint of will, Tamsen didn’t swoon. “Can he make it at all?”

  “Aye, he can—” Jesse grabbed hold of Cade’s bare arm to wrench himself to his feet. While Cade donned his hunting shirt and coat, Jesse got a look at her. “You’re hurt.” He drew her close, cradling her face in bloodstained fingers.

  “The rifle banged my nose, is all.” She could barely breathe through the swollen tissues now. “Forget about me.”

  “Never.”

  The intensity of that word pulled her straight into his soul. She clung to him, every fiber fixed on one hope—to find a way through this turmoil of blood and snow to a life in the sun with Jesse Bird, to bear his children and keep his hearth and make for him a haven from the world’s calamity. She poured it into her eyes, giving back the unreserved devotion he’d shown her all along.

  “I love you,” he said, lips trembling blue.

  Before she could reply in kind, Cade thrust between them, leading the packhorse over. “All right, you two. No time for—”

  Tamsen heard the click of a hammer cocking behind them, but Cade was faster to react. He lunged in front of her and Jesse as the shot fired. Blood spattered Tamsen as Cade bore them both down into the snow.

  The horses shied, revealing Hezekiah Parrish striding out of the snowfall, tossing his spent pistol back to Dominic Trimble and pulling another from his belt. He halted with it aimed. Sprawled in the snow and half-tangled with Jesse, Tamsen was frozen, though not now with the cold. Only her heart careened inside her, frantic with the paralyzing fear.

  “Pa!” It tore from Jesse’s throat like an animal cry as he struggled to extricate himself from Cade’s inert weight, fresh red blooming on the linen binding his leg.

  The ball had taken Cade in the chest. He lay still, his blood bright in the snow now too. Red and white. The whole world was red and white, and the cold black of a pistol barrel. Grief and helpless rage tore through Tamsen’s chest.

  “You didn’t have to do this!”

  Ignoring her, Mr. Parrish said over his shoulder, “The Indian’s down. Bird’s wounded. Get the horses and find Kincaid—I can deal with them alone.”

  “Do what you want with those two.” Dominic jerked his head at Jesse and Cade. “But we got us a deal with ’Brose. She goes to him.”

  “Then find the man!” The pistol in Mr. Parrish’s grasp swung a few inches sideways. Dominic cursed and sprinted off through the trees.

  Tamsen got to her knees, but Jesse grasped her arm as she tried to stand. “Stay down.”

  “Just let me go with him. Let this be over.” She fought his hold. “Jesse, please. I’ll make Ambrose under—”

  “Wasted breath, girl,” Mr. Parrish cut in. “Months ago you had that chance, but not now. And since you are of no more use to me, I cannot let you live with what you know.”

  The pistol hammer clicked.

  “No!” It was a moan, low in Jesse’s throat. His rifle had fallen too far out of reach, but too late Tamsen realized that beneath the cover of Cade’s out-flung arm, Jesse’d worked loose the hatchet at his belt. Too late she saw a third man emerging from the swirling white, a man with a red blaze of hair spilling below his hat, a pistol of his own aimed.

  Ambrose Kincaid roared something incoherent.

  Shoving her off balance into the snow, Jesse raised up and drew back his arm. The report of a shot fell across Tamsen’s heart like a thunderclap, as Jesse hurled the hatchet.

  Bullet and blade each found their mark, but Tamsen hadn’t another thought to spare her stepfather. Neither did Jesse. He was too busy clasping
her, running his hands over her shoulders, arms, face. “Are you hit? Did he fire?”

  “No. I’m well—but Cade!”

  They turned as one to peel away Cade’s blood-soaked coat. The ball had pierced his chest, high on the right side. Tamsen pressed her hands to the wound, hoping to staunch the bleeding.

  Jesse bent his face to Cade’s. “He’s breathing.” Fear tempered the relief in his voice. There was so much blood, and Tamsen’s efforts weren’t stemming the flow. They had to find him shelter and help.

  In unison they raised their heads, seeking the enemy that had so long pursued them. Yards away, Ambrose Kincaid knelt over her stepfather. In contrast to their frantic hovering, his stillness told her Hezekiah Parrish was beyond aid. Mr. Kincaid was staring at the body sprawled in the snow as if he couldn’t credit what had transpired, or his own part in it.

  There would be time for coming to terms, but not while Cade’s life was seeping into the snow. “Mr. Kincaid—please—help us!”

  His bright head lifted at her plea. Stiffly, he rose and came toward them, gaze fixed on her. His face beneath its coppery stubble was the dingy white of unbleached linen, his blue eyes almost feverish as they darted over her buckskin garments, her unbraided hair crusted with snow, her swollen nose, all of her spattered with gore.

  “Miss Littlejohn …?”

  Amidst dread and cold and crippling anxiety, a giddy spark leapt within Tamsen. The man wasn’t sure he recognized her. Then Jesse’s hand gripped her shoulder. Pressing down on Cade’s bleeding chest, she said, “My name is Tamsen Bird, and I mean to keep it so.”

  Mr. Kincaid flinched, but she had no delicacy of feeling to spare him. She’d had no attention to spare the battle these last moments either. The sporadic din had faded. The Franklin militia that had surrounded Colonel Tipton’s house had scattered into the hills or fallen. Her scrabbling mind latched on to the one pertinent result of this development. “Where are they taking the wounded?”

  Mr. Kincaid halted. Beside her Jesse stilled, waiting on the word of this man who had long loomed a threat in their minds. Tamsen took Jesse’s hand from her shoulder and placed it over Cade’s wound, pressing down on it.