A Moonbow Night

by Laura Frantz

  “We agreed the score was to be fifteen,” he murmured.

  “Eleven,” Sion corrected, leading another trick.

  Cornelius studied his hand coldly. “I didn’t doubt you’d be good at this, Morgan. ’Tis known as a game of low repute.”

  The table stilled. Sion digested the words in teeth-gritted silence.

  “If you’re so high and mighty, what the devil are you playing it for?” One of the longhunters clapped Cornelius on the shoulder and gained a slim smile.

  “I do prefer whist or faro,” Cornelius said.

  “Them’s for fancy pants. You ain’t a Tory, are ye?”

  Cornelius snorted. “Best ask that of the man next to you. He’s with the Loyal Land Company as a Crown surveyor. I’m merely his mapmaker.”

  The man pulled on his unkempt beard, eyes narrowing to suspicious slits. “The Loyal, eh?”

  Sion played another card. “Running the line for the Loyal makes me no more a Tory than being in the wilderness makes you an Indian.”

  All chuckled but Cornelius. He sat in broody silence, holding up the game till more metheglin was served. Sion eyed his hand, sorry he’d followed the woman here in a dose of rashness he now regretted. A sense of foreboding hovered, pungent as the swirling smoke. Sion knew what Cornelius was capable of. And he didn’t want these hospitable people, whoever they were, privy to the Englishman’s outbursts.

  “There’s been more than a few surveyors in these parts, but most don’t make it back to the settlements.” The lame man spoke, tone thoughtful. “’Tis a dangerous time to be carrying a compass.”

  “There’s nowhere safe, be it east or west,” Sion said slowly, thoughts full of General Washington’s ragtag army. “I’m against the king’s proclamation prohibiting settlers from western lands. Seems like a man can move when and where he pleases. Surveying Kentucke may be the best way to fight the British in the end.”

  “You turncoat.” The slur slid off Cornelius’s tongue all too easily. “I wonder what the Loyal would say about that, Morgan. No doubt you’d lose your precious pay—”

  “Or yer scalp.” The longhunter’s throaty chuckle was unnerving. “Best heed them musket-totin’ red men. Word is the Redcoats are givin’ guns to the tribes and aimin’ to fight a war right here in the woods, or soon will be.”

  “Muskets are hardly needed when knives and tomahawks suffice. I’d be more worried if the Redcoats supplied the redskins with fatal Pennsylvania rifles like these.” Setting his cup aside, Cornelius leaned toward the wall where Sion’s rifle rested and took Annie in hand.

  Sion went white-hot at his impudence. His tilted chair came down. Loose-limbed, Cornelius swung the gun to his shoulder like a careless child with a toy, the barrel leveled at Sion’s chest. The trigger clicked. Primed and loaded, the rifle exploded in a storm of fiery sparks. Sion lunged right, his chair tumbling backwards.

  Every man was on his feet, their startled faces obscured by a cloud of dense, choking smoke. The acrid burn of powder soured the air as Sion wrested the gun away, sending Cornelius against the log wall, the pipe collection shattering.

  The lame man’s shout for order was lost as the rest of the longhunters rushed in from the dogtrot to join the melee, a dozen snarling, riled dogs on their heels.

  5

  In going up the Cumberland River, I saw the highest and stoutest cane I ever saw.

  —JACOB LAWSON

  While she swept the kitchen floor, Tempe kept one ear tuned to the keeping room. Would the men stay on? Bed down in the loft? Her step lightened as she listened to them playing cards. Though the dark-haired stranger’s low tones were new to her, she could have easily distinguished it from a roomful of other masculine voices.

  Who was this Sion Morgan?

  A borderman, likely. One of those hardy souls from back of the settlements, more at home in the woods than a cabin. Maybe kin to the sharpshooter Daniel Morgan or one of his revered riflemen. How such a man came to be tied to the banty rooster was a downright riddle. Necessity, she guessed. Cornelius Lyon would be easy prey for Indians. A meadow mouse to a hawk. But this man Morgan . . .

  As she thought it, a harsh laugh shattered her reverie. And then, a heartbeat after, came rifle fire. Like her bad dream that morning she’d waited for James and he never came. It had been her marrying day, but there’d been a burying. It had come swiftly. Without warning.

  Would her entire life be marked by bursts of powder and lead?

  Dropping her broom, she made for the kitchen door and rushed into the keeping room. Smoke seared her senses. A bench had been overturned, and brawling dogs and men were hither and yon. Paige was cowering beneath the loft steps, and Ma—Tempe looked wildly about—Ma had likely gone to work in the corn patch, sparing herself the spectacle.

  Tempe startled as Russell fired his pistol into the floorboards at his feet, the angry jut of his jaw carrying further warning. The floor was more easily mended than the roof, rafters crowded with herbs and strings of beans and other sundry things. Russell yelled for order as he reloaded with shaking hands, hardly able to manage the task.

  Hurt took hold of her. Hurt that her brother was broken in body and spirit, scarred beyond telling. Hurt that such a ruckus had been raised when they took such pains to be peaceable. Hurt that she’d thought well of a man who seemed ready to tear the heart out of his friend.

  Cornelius now had more than his cane-stobbed foot to trouble him. He’d been pinned to the wall by the surveyor she’d just served, his arrogant nose bloodied, perhaps broken.

  If Cornelius Lyon was a banty rooster, Sion Morgan was a wolf.

  Half crazed with fury, Sion jerked the red neckerchief from Cornelius’s throat and proceeded to tie his hands in an unforgiving knot. The ring of men looked on, the lame man’s pistol trained on whomever cared to court more trouble.

  Crowning Sion’s humiliation, the indigo-clad girl had just come in, and he felt a fresh flare of aggravation that he didn’t know her full name. She stood, hands on hips, looking at him warily, almost accusingly, as if he was to blame for the mess—or should have stopped it from the start.

  Sion pulled Cornelius to his feet and shoved him out the door to the dogtrot. The coin he owed was uppermost, though he was too riled to take account of all the damage. He removed a small pouch from the bosom of his hunting shirt and tossed it to the lame man, who caught it midair. The merry jingle of money added to Sion’s aggravation as he ducked beneath the door’s lintel, never so glad for fresh air.

  With a last, regretful look at Smokey, he slung the bound, inebriated Cornelius onto Beck’s saddle and began an ignoble retreat, intent on their camp downriver.

  Tempe attacked a clump of weeds crowding the corn patch, cleaving the green intruders with a vicious jab of her hoe. She’d helped clean the keeping room, sweeping up scattered shards of pipe, even picking the spent rifle ball from the log wall, but her emotions still ran high. Before it sank into the wood, the bullet had burrowed clean through a beloved book, the very heart of Robert Herrick’s Poems. She felt the loss keenly, though she’d committed most of the verse to memory.

  Down the row, Aylee bent and watered plant after plant, her comely frame with its cambric apron and cap out of place amid the dirt and stumps. Despite the recent rain, the May sun was hot, the soil crusted dry. She glanced Tempe’s way. “Tell me again what happened to get you het up so.”

  Whack. Another weed fell. Tempe leaned on her hoe, gaze roaming the narrow field’s shadowed borders. She’d explained the fracas once, but her mother dug deeper, beyond spent rifle balls and overturned benches.

  When Tempe said nothing, Aylee filled the silence. “There’s bad blood betwixt those two strangers. What has that to do with you?”

  Tempe uprooted another weed. “Nothing . . . everything.” She swallowed, the words sour. With all her heart she wanted to spare her mother more trouble. “They’re with the Loyal Land Company, Mama. The Loyal.”

  Aylee’s watering ceased. “Says who
?”

  “Says Paige. Then Russell heard it from Cornelius Lyon himself when they were playing cards after supper.”

  Rarely did Aylee show alarm, but now stark vulnerability etched her face. “They’ve not come for your father? Or is it land they’re after?”

  “Both, maybe.”

  Aylee resumed her pouring gourdful by gourdful, again the picture of composure. “How are they to tie us to the past? Your pa hides hisself. We take care never to say we’re Tuckers. Most ask few questions and are just glad for bed and board.”

  “Most aren’t the Loyal Land Company.” Despite the heat of the day, Tempe shivered. Standing on the dogtrot an hour earlier, she’d seen the way Morgan had hog-tied Lyon and slung him atop his horse. It brought to bear Pa’s words when they’d fled Virginia after his deadly scuffle.

  I’ll not stay and be hung from a crossbeam or even branded on the cheek.

  Sion Morgan could do either with ease. There was something smoldering inside him, some fire that threatened to reduce him to ashes. Despite his stoic demeanor, Tempe sensed the rattler’s bite beneath. Anyone who’d set foot on the frontier held tight to something that haunted them. What haunted Morgan?

  “All that matters is that your father’s out of harm’s way.” Aylee began moving toward the creek that skirted the cornfield to refill her bucket. “Misters Morgan and Lyon won’t stay long in the Kentucke territory, to my way of thinking. They’re liable to be gone before your pa returns from trading, and we’ll be none the worse for it.”

  Tempe opened her mouth then shut it, not wanting to naysay her mother. Let Aylee live with the hope there’d be no payment, no reckoning, for Pa’s crime. But Tempe knew better. Killing a man cast a long shadow, be it in settled Virginia or the savage woods.

  The short path between cornfield and inn was well trod, wending through dense forest and overlooking the river far below. Most days it held a bit of enchantment, wooing Tempe with a clump of May strawberries or wild honeysuckle or the oak’s gauzy tasseling. Such things crowded out care, allowing her to lose herself in the pure beauty and lonesomeness of her surroundings. But today, as twilight set in, she was still full of the noon fracas and what the coming of these men meant.

  She stood at the entry to the barn-shed, eyes adjusting to the dimness, breathing in the rich scent of wood, recalling the sweat and pleasure she and her brother had shared cutting cedar in the fall when the sap was down. Now stacked along one wall and dried, the wood would become all manner of things. Tubs. Rolling pins. Piggins. Farm implements. This was her brother’s domain, the tools on the walls made by his hands, his companionable presence felt.

  “Russell.”

  He looked up at her soft call—she knew better than to surprise him—then returned to the wood he was perusing by the light of a fat pine notch.

  Putting away her hoe, Tempe eyed the dog lying in a bed of cedar shavings near a worktable. How the hurt creature had managed to make its way from the woodshed befuddled her. On sight of her, it thumped its pale, plumy tail, eyes eager.

  Stooping, Tempe ran a hand down the downy back, careful to avoid the splinted leg. Why hadn’t she asked Sion Morgan more about his dog? “Would that I knew your name.” Weary, she sat down, her fingers sinking into the dog’s fur, the cedar shavings beneath them, and looked up at Russell. “What are you making?”

  He began splitting cedar into staves, hands steady as he managed the froe. “Ma said Paige needs a new churn.”

  Nay, Russell. Paige needs you.

  Would he attempt to woo her with wood? Tempe felt a bit of Pa’s exasperation. Weary of being the go-between, Tempe sighed, a sign he easily read.

  “You still nettled about Morgan and Lyon?”

  She nodded. “I told Mama. She thinks they’ll soon move on.”

  “The tall one, Morgan . . .” Russell cast a look her way. “He’ll be back for his dog.”

  “I wonder . . .” Could such a man have any tenderness inside him? Waste time on a wounded creature?

  At her tense silence, he said, “You misjudge the man. It’s Lyon you need to be chary of.”

  The banty rooster? Tempe held her tongue. Or the wolf?

  “Lyon’s the one who fired the gun, remember, and made a mort of trouble over cards. He lit into Morgan like a bear cub after a bee’s nest while playing All Fours, even before the bullet went awry.” He hissed out a breath. “Mishandling a man’s rifle is akin to mishandling a man’s woman. You know that.”

  She understood. Not even her own flintlock, given her by an ague-ridden Pennsylvanian who’d died in their care, was so finely wrought. But it was Sion Morgan’s hands that left her pondering. At the base of his fingers were fleshy indentions made by keeping extra balls in hand, a sure sign of an experienced rifleman, a sharpshooter. “I’ve never seen such a gun.”

  “I favored his engraved powder horn myself.” Russell set the froe aside. “Reckon you could manage Morgan’s rifle?”

  Tempe bit her lip. “I wouldn’t try lest he shackle me like he did Cornelius Lyon.”

  Russell frowned when she’d rather he chuckle. “I’d like to see you outshoot him.”

  “He’d likely not warm to that either.” Her thoughts swung to more troubling matters. “Paige wheedled all sorts of talk out of Lyon, waiting on him hand and foot. Seems like they’re to meet up with a guide come Crab Orchard just shy of the settlements. They mean to map the Great Meadow—”

  Russell’s countenance darkened. “The land around the Kentucke forts?”

  “My guess is, given the danger there, they’ll head south, toward the Cherokee in Tennessee, the very trail Pa is taking. I fear—” She wrestled with her thoughts, barely able to corral them into words. “I fear they’ll meet up with Pa either coming or going.”

  Russell hung his head, broody. A-shiver again, Tempe got up and went to stand by the barn-shed door. Through the wind’s gentle soughing she could hear Ma in the distance, driving the belled cattle home. “These men—the Loyal—put me in mind of the past, how Pa might have done things differently.”

  “How so?”

  “Mighten Pa have turned the other cheek, as Scripture said, let the Crown surveyor have his way? Saved himself from becoming embroiled in a lethal boundary dispute? Even though Frederick Ice started the trouble, Pa could have walked away. They were mismatched. Pa doesn’t know his own strength. He took the man’s life meaning only to warn him.”

  “’Twas more than about the land, Tempe. Ice was a Tory who had it in for Pa from the start, protesting all Patriot claims.”

  She fell silent, the details fuzzy. Still reeling from James’s death, she’d recalled little but their hasty flight months later over the Gap. Late spring it had been. They were continually wet. Hungry. They’d lived in a cave all the while they’d built this place. For a year or better they’d expended their strength carving something civilized from soil and rock and river, always on the lookout for Virginia authorities or those intent on collecting a bounty. Fugitives, all of them. Or so it seemed.

  “You forget that Pa would have been tried by Tories in those parts and hung more for his politics,” Russell said. “Even though Ice started the trouble and stole Pa’s claim, few would oppose him. He was a man of means with ties to Williamsburg, thus the generous bounty.”

  The bounty. One thousand British pounds for Pa’s capture. Was a man’s life worth so little?

  “I’m in agreement with Ma.” Russell continued on in a rare burst of verbosity. “We should have stayed on the Yadkin back in Carolina where we were born. Stayed on where the Tuckers and Bryants and Boones had roots.”

  The longing in his voice wrenched her. “You could go back, Russell. You could leave here—”

  “And what would a lame man do, Temperance? Farm? I—”

  “You needn’t farm. You’ve no call to set foot in a field.” She waved a hand about the shed. “You’re a cooper and blacksmith and gunsmith and more. Let folks come to you. Take Paige and go back—”

>   “There’s no going back.” He began examining the staves, his hands beset with a slight tremor and drawing her notice. “Powell Valley was the turning point. Seems like little has been right since.”

  She stared at him, stunned he’d even mouthed the words. Like Pa, Russell never spoke of the valley or that chill October morning. Nor could he bear the mention. For weeks after, he’d uttered nothing, nor responded to anything asked of him, and it seemed his mind struggled to heal alongside his shattered leg.

  She returned her attention to the woods beyond the barn-shed, to the little dip in the trail where Ma would soon drive the livestock past trees and blossom bushes, her willow switch swishing this way and that.

  Dare she speak of it? “I keep thinking of that haunted day, what James’s father said . . .” She swallowed, summoning the words beneath a swell of still-tender feelings. “When the men went back to say words over the graves . . .”

  James was a good son, and I looked forward to a long and useful life for him, but it is not to be . . . Sometimes I feel like a leaf carried on a stream. It may whirl about and turn and twist, but it is always carried forward . . .

  She felt the want of Russell’s presence before she’d finished speaking and turned and saw that he had gone. Where to, she didn’t know. Remorse flooded her. She knew better than to speak of the past. He’d lived through the horror she’d only heard about secondhand. She had no right to the mention. He’d carry the scars, seen and unseen, to his grave.

  6

  Only a few white men were ever as good as the Indians at the Indian game. Boone and Kenton were.

  —FREDERICK PALMER

  Fog rolled in, spreading a gauzy white blanket over the river bottoms, as thick and bewildering as the surrounding cane land. Such weather made surveying work impossible. The fact chafed like a burr as Sion pondered what little land they’d laid off, looking over the documents he carried. Encased in hog bladders to protect them from the damp, the Virginia land warrants looked as new as when they’d arrived by express at Fort Henry three months before.