A Moonbow Night

by Laura Frantz

  Nate saved Sion from cautioning. “Best save your vices for the hearth’s fire at the Moonbow Inn.”

  “And why, pray tell, is it called the Moonbow?”

  “On account of some magic that occurs at night beneath a full moon. A sort of rainbow in the mist of the falls.” At Cornelius’s second snort, Nate shrugged. “Since Dan’l said it, I’d be inclined to believe it.”

  Spencer and Hascal were chuckling and elbowing again nonetheless. Ignoring them, Sion stroked Smokey’s velvety ear absently as the collie stretched out beside him, warming his buckskin-clad thigh. The appeal of an inn, however paltry, seemed more woolgathering. But buried in the back of Sion’s conscience was hazy confirmation. “I recollect something about a woman innkeeper and her daughter being a part of Boone’s first try at Kentucke in ’73.”

  The chuckling ceased.

  “You mean that time when Boone’s son was killed just shy of the Gap?” Nate’s face looked as gray as his hair in the twilight. “That was a mournful time, to hear tell of it.”

  “Aye. Somehow a few people in their party made it into Kentucke later on and ended up along the Wasioto—the Shawnee River—and started being hospitable.” Sion paused, dredging his memory for details. “Likely this so-called inn is no more than a fortified cabin or blockhouse with a few pickets and loopholes, something along the lines of Boone’s and Harrod’s stations.”

  “A woman innkeeper and her daughter?” Cornelius made a sour face. “Surely you jest, Morgan.”

  “Likely there are some menfolk around too,” Nate speculated, “if only trappers and traders and the like. More settlers are coming over the Gap than you think.”

  “Sounds like a curious operation to me.” Cornelius stuck his pipe between his teeth as if pretending to smoke. “Though I would warm to a pretty petticoat if one should materialize.”

  “Best shut your yap and hie you to bed, then.” Nate stood slowly, retreating stiffly to a pile of dry leaves he’d gathered beneath a rocky overhang. “The sooner we see sunrise, the sooner we’ll be downriver and mebbe learn if there’s somethin’ to this whole moonbow affair.”

  “I’ll take first watch,” Sion said, shouldering his rifle as the dogs about them bristled and the wolves’ hair-raising howling began anew.

  2

  There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

  —SAMUEL JOHNSON

  At first light this bright April morn, the low-beamed kitchen was humming with life and spirit. The spicy-sweet scent of sassafras clung to the air, competing with the sizzle of sausage seasoned with sage and red pepper.

  Giving a last poke to the meat, Tempe Tucker sat back on her heels, studying the axe near the fire. Russell kept it there on cold mornings, warming the steel before cutting wood. She listened for his ungainly step on the dogtrot, but all she heard was the burst of birdsong beyond the open door. Its piercing sweetness did little to dispel her uneasiness. Once she had been her brother’s worry; now he was hers.

  The back door creaked open to admit the bound girl, Paige, toting a piggin of new milk. She poured it into a shallow keeler to cool whilst Tempe’s mother, Aylee, parched coffee in a skillet. When the sausage was fried and the eggs were set, Russell appeared, studying Tempe and murmuring a greeting to their mother but avoiding Paige. She seemed not to mind, though a telling flush rode her cheekbones beneath her pale cap.

  Taking a stool, Russell dipped his head in a silent prayer as Tempe placed breakfast before him. “Best set a few more dinner plates,” he murmured. “Some men from Harrod’s Fort are headed back to the settlements.”

  Aylee gave a nod, returning to her biscuit dough. “Raven told you that, I reckon.”

  When Russell didn’t respond, Paige filled the silence. “Raven, aye. He’s always on the prowl. For a little powder and bullet lead he’ll share just about anything.”

  Tempe nearly sighed aloud. When her brother’s half-blood friend came near, she cut a wide swath around him, though he’d done them no ill. In truth, he often made their lives easier, spelling out who was coming and going, the where and why of it. Still, she felt uneasy in his presence, his dark eyes and long silences unsettling.

  By the time Russell had finished eating and gone outside to split wood, they were playing the “here’s what I miss” game again. Though it had been four years since they’d fled Virginia, the yearning for safety and civility still lingered.

  “Here’s what I miss.” Aylee began to pound the mound of beaten biscuit dough with the stock of a broken musket. Looking on, Tempe wondered if her mother relished the chance to vent her pent-up frustrations. Three hundred licks and the dough would be ready to cut into rounds, prick with a fork, and bake. “I miss hearing Squire Boone preach Sundays on the Clinch.” Aylee paused and waved a floured hand. “He had a way about him that always left you pondering till the next Sabbath.”

  Nodding, Paige returned scrubbed pewter plates to a shelf. “Here’s what I miss.” She hesitated, tongue between her teeth. “I miss market days—and Punch and Judy shows in town that made me laugh till my sides hurt.”

  There was a long pause. Both women looked at Tempe. She poured herself a splash of sassafras tea, weighing her answer. Truth be told, her heart was so full of the here and now there wasn’t room for any woolgathering.

  Taking a pinch of sausage from the skillet, she finally said, “We’ll soon have a mort of men to feed tonight. Best ponder that.”

  Aylee began rolling out dough. “We can fix those squirrels you caught and salted down in barrels. They’ll make a fine dinner with cornmeal dumplings and leather-britches beans. We’re a mite short of flour, but Paige can turn out ginger cake and custard with what’s left.” She set the rolling pin aside and began cutting out biscuits. “Temperance Grace . . .”

  Tempe’s gaze, fixed on Russell beyond the kitchen window as he chopped wood, returned to her mother.

  “Mind the time as you go about your business.” Aylee’s words held a warning. “Take care to stay clear of the main trails.”

  With a dutiful aye, Tempe downed the dregs of her sassafras tea before slipping out the open door.

  Tempe took to the higher ridges where snow and ice held sway, the cold polishing every rock and speck of grass like barley sugar. Scraggly pines clung to barren, rocky places, their seeds a bounty for winter-starved birds. Below, in the warmer hollows, the dogwood’s riotous flowering spelled corn-planting time, but winter whispered wait. It was cold for spring, bitter cold, the chill hurrying her on. Dogwood winter, some said, with the snow on the blossoms.

  It didn’t take long to reach her father’s rockhouse fronting the Shawnee River, but a world of danger lay in the distance. Spring was a chancy time to be about, with the Indians taking to the trails and traces, resuming their wandering and warring sure as spring’s stirring. Only in winter did the Shawnee keep to their camps on the upper Ohio or the Cherokee to their southern villages, the troublesome Chickamauga down along Chickamauga Creek. But with the war on between the British and Americans, the Indians’ habits seemed uncertain too.

  She led two packhorses, one particularly mulish. Herod always behaved better when weighted down with flour and provisions. He tugged at the rope, snorting his complaint at leaving their warm barn-shed.

  “Pa’ll soon have you in hand,” she murmured, thinking of the perilous journey to come and wishing she could go too. When Pa left, it seemed she held her breath for weeks till he returned, so worried was she he’d not come back.

  Yet no matter how chancy, her father’s treks west to trade were vital. West was best despite the ongoing Indian threat. He dare not go east, not with the trouble that had thrust them from the settlements to begin with. The crime that had sent them fleeing their shabby cabin on Virginia’s Clinch River was ever fresh. ’Twas in another cold spring that her beloved father had snapped like a fiddle string, flying into the deadly rage that further uprooted them. ’Twas this
that made them watch their backs.

  Bending, she hobbled both horses behind a thicket of ivy, then straightened to give a last look about. The only sounds were the chatter of a squirrel and the faint piping of birds.

  Satisfied no one else was near, Tempe gave a sparrow’s simple but expected call. There was the customary pause before her father let down the ladder. It descended with a hiss, a curious concoction of whang leather and tough hickory, strong enough to bear her weight and the pack of provisions strapped to her back.

  His sinewy hand shot out, gripping her outstretched fingers till her feet were planted firmly on the cliff’s ledge. He then pulled the ladder up after her. The river’s spring rush rumbled far below, muting their voices.

  August Tucker’s gaze cut to the rockhouse entrance and the woods beyond. “See any sign?”

  It was the first question he always asked her. “None,” she answered, “be it red man or white.”

  Pa had wintered with them at the inn, but now, whilst the woods were full of travelers, this hidden cave, one of a number of rockhouses fronting the river, would be his home. She looked about, getting her bearings. The dwelling bore a buffalo robe bed, a lantern on a ledge, some cooking vessels, and a fire pit. All familiar, even beloved. His custom before retiring each night was priming his two flintlock rifles and setting them and his sharpened axe beside his bed.

  “Looks like you don’t need any sweetening.” She shot him a half smile. Crock after crock of maple syrup lined one stony wall. Her pa, for all his peculiar ways, was never idle. “I brought salt. Meal. Some needful things for your journey.” She handed him the shoepacks Aylee had made.

  August took them, examining the work of his wife’s hands, his expression pronouncing them adequate. “Tell me again what she has need of.”

  “Flour. Ink and paper. Straight pins. Maybe a trinket for Paige.” She wrinkled her nose at the bounty ready for market at the back of the rockhouse. Such a wealth of skins he had, a whole winter’s cache, feral smelling but perfectly tanned. Much could be gotten from French traders farther down the Shawnee River, even comely things that turned a woman’s head. “Russell needs a new file for his gun mending, some powder and bullet lead.”

  “I’m considering making powder right here. There’s a saltpeter cave near Piney Creek.” He began pulling on the shoepacks, his feet like two canoe paddles they were so large. “Any news I should know about?”

  She studied her much smaller moccasins, the elk skin worn smooth and dark, and resurrected the talk that swirled thick as smoke at the inn. Longhunters, trappers, and traders all carried tittle-tattle, some of it reliable, all of it dark. “There’s been some trouble at Boonesborough.”

  “Shawnee raiders, like as not.” He paced about, trying out his new shoes. At a raven’s cry he moved back from the ledge. “But I misdoubt men like Boone and Harrod and Kenton will tuck tail and run.”

  Nay, not even the death of his son had curbed Boone’s zeal. Despite her heartache, Tempe felt a pride in them all, these unflinching frontiersmen who stood their ground. “What with Kentucke being part of Virginia now, more settlers will be coming over the Gap. There’s no stopping the wilderness fever, as Ma calls it.”

  He frowned, the deep creases in his forehead reminding her of plowed furrows in a field. “If folks can make it to the forts, they’ll help defend the settlements till the end. They aim to win, come what may.”

  Stooping, he began riffling through the pack, provocation giving way to pleasure as he unearthed a clay pipe and a twist of tobacco. “Your ma’s a good woman, always thinking of what I need.” He fingered the pipe’s smooth stem, clearly anticipating a smoke. “How’s Russell? Paige?”

  “His leg’s ailing him some with all the cold and damp. He and Paige—” She left off, frustration gnawing at her. “They’re no cozier than when you left.”

  He shook his head. “Russell lets his lame leg get in the way of his lovemaking.” He closed the pack and straightened to his full height, nearly scraping the smoke-blackened ceiling. Tempe felt small as a meadow mouse in his lengthy shadow. His eyes were eagle sharp. “And you? Any man come by who takes your fancy?” When she hesitated, he added, “I should send you to Boonesborough or Fort Harrod. They’re in need of able women—wives—though you’re liable to shame half the men with your marksmanship.”

  “No man wants a woman who can outshine him.”

  “The right kind of man won’t care. Mighten even be proud of such.” His gaze narrowed. “I misdoubt it’s your way with a rifle that keeps callers at bay. You can’t get past what happened in Powell Valley.”

  She stared at him. Never did he speak of the valley. The shock of it sent all the coldness out of her. “Pa, I—”

  “You can’t keep grieving a dead man any more than Russell can keep grieving a lame leg.”

  The heat in his words matched the heat in her face. Setting her jaw, she looked to the back of the dwelling where, to occupy himself, he’d etched a battle scene with charcoal. She made out swivels and clouds of smoke, tumbled men strewn upon the ground like broken twigs. His stint in the French and Indian War haunted him still. Who was he to take her to task about the past?

  “It’s not been four years yet,” she said, ever mindful it was approaching May, James’s birthday month. May had ever been melancholy for her since. “Maybe in time . . .”

  He shook his head, his unbound hair a mass of pewter strands about corded shoulders. “Time enough to bury the dead and get on with living.”

  The rockhouse was suddenly stifling. Breathless. She nearly swayed from a suffocating sense of loss. With a lightning-like gesture, she unfurled the ladder. Down she went with nary a goodbye, looking up just once to see him peering over the cavern’s lip, watching her descent, his face a stew of displeasure.

  “I should be back by month’s end,” he called down after her.

  “I hope you live to see it,” she shot back. Just last May they’d stumbled upon a slain party in a thicket near the trace he’d soon travel. Bedding slashed open, feathers strewn far and wide. The ground had been white as snow . . . and red as sarvis berries.

  “A right terrible waste,” Pa had said.

  They’d wrapped the bodies in sheets they couldn’t spare and buried them, covering the graves with logs lest wolves dig them up. Just like the burial party had done with James back in Powell Valley.

  Her James.

  Blinking back tears, she shivered and darted a searching look about. Lightened of her load, she took a familiar path, traveling east straight as the crow flies, reluctant to return to the inn just yet. The ground was thawing now, the sun strengthening in a sky that was that startling shade of blue owned by early spring.

  At the foot of the ridge she came to a swollen creek, its muddy banks buried by a tangle of laurel. Here a number of horses had forded, all iron shod and heading north toward Crab Orchard and the Kentucke settlements.

  Numbed by sadness, she followed their trail for a time, distracted by showy blossoms and countless awakening things. Every minute or so she stopped to listen. But the sough of the wind overhead in the newly leafed trees kept her from hearing all but the mournful cry of an oriole. The woods were full of shifting shapes, the play of light and shadow unsettling.

  The mounted party she pursued led into a heavy growth of hardwoods—giant chestnut and oak and elm—letting in so little light the forest floor looked swept clean of undergrowth. Here travel was easier, the threat of Indian ambush less likely.

  In time she gained a favorite meadow and a little hollow, lacy ferns curling round a mossy spring rimmed with lichen-clad rock. Soft grass cushioned her feet and the light grew brighter. She could see several rods ahead, the beloved glade a sort of refuge after the heavy gloom. Could the horsemen feel it too?

  She walked on with a tightening in her chest that was not all tiredness. A few paces more and she stopped cold. To the left of the trail, in a shaft of sunlight, a hatchet had blazed the smooth, silvery-gray bark of b
eech after beech, the initials cut plain.

  SM.

  Beneath it was the date.

  8th April.

  Two days past.

  Tempe bristled. This was no man’s woods. Beautiful. Hallowed. Prime bottomland. The soil was rich and unredeemed. Now the trees were disfigured. The land claimed. Desecrated.

  She took a step back, disgust and dismay adance inside her.

  Surveyors.

  The Indians bore a particular hatred for such men. This she understood. They came. They took. Often they indulged in the wanton slaughter of game, leaving a litter of wasted meat in their wake. Frederick Ice, one of Virginia’s Crown surveyors, leapt to mind, and his and Pa’s deadly tussle. She shoved it aside with effort, folding the memory up like a tattered package, where it took up uneasy residence beside her beloved James.

  Since Daniel Boone had been sent into the Kentucke territory to recall all surveyors two years prior due to Indian hostilities, few had been brave enough to venture over the Gap. She’d not come across a surveying party since. Maybe the strength of her reaction lay in this. She’d thought them gone. The woods theirs. Her father safe.

  Till now.

  Still sore from her father’s scolding, Tempe was more mindful than ever of the diners crowding the Moonbow Inn that night. Betimes it seemed her life was made up of wary men smelling of sweat and horseflesh, their long rifles leaning against log walls, their hunting shirts begrimed with grease and black powder. Rawboned and awkward, whittled down by weather and danger, most approached Aylee Tucker’s table with an awe and gratitude that bordered on reverence.

  Tempe’s mother tolerated no spitting of tobacco, no profaneness or drunkenness or tussling. She was quick to dump a steaming trencher into the laps of any who dared defy the posted rules. Word traveled fast along the frontier. Best scrub your face and mind your manners at the Moonbow Inn where the Virginia widow held sway. Only a shilling for dinner and seven pence for lodging, and the fare was plentiful, the bedding clean, the serving girls among the fairest flowers of the frontier, it was said.