by Laura Frantz
To his credit, he approached her, offering her his share of bullet lead. “Nay,” she told him a trifle pridefully. “You’ll be needing it more than I.”
He said nothing to this, just gave a nod.
She turned aside, declining a second round. All the men but Sion continued until dark. Last she looked he was leaning against the fence with the silver-haired smoker, deep in conversation. She slipped away without another glance.
Maybe she’d get that bath after all.
Clutching a moss sponge and a dab of hair wash made from chestnut leaves and skins, she took her bath. Under cover of darkness, in a placid pool far below the falls, she felt the heat of the day and the grease of the kitchen melt away. The moon was full but fickle, only hinting of a moonbow. She was cast back to her time with Raven a fortnight past, when the moonbow had appeared and bewitched them both.
Pulling free of the refreshing water, she sat on a rock and untangled her hair with a comb of Russell’s making, the teeth wide and smooth. The clean shift she’d brought settled over her like a caress.
Here in the quiet she was better able to sort through the demands of the day. The tumult of the falls was more a whisper this far downriver, allowing for unhindered thought. Deep in her spirit she sensed Pa was on his way back to them. Two months he’d been gone. Tomorrow she would go to the rockhouse, tidy things there, and see if any critters had made mischief, though Ma couldn’t spare her long with so many clamoring to be fed. Provisions were running thin. Pa was never so needed as now. Russell was busy night and day shoeing horses and making repairs, running low on iron. A smithy so far from civilization was a difficult endeavor. Her brother was a master at making do.
Hair almost dry, she gathered up her soiled clothes and started toward home reluctantly, the ground warm beneath her bare feet. Heading uphill, she followed a willow-skirted creek. A few steps more and she heard whistling. Low and musical, it gave her pause. Few chanced the woods at night, yet there in the path not a rod away stood a man. But not just any man.
Sion.
He sought her out for a purpose, she knew. And kindly gave her notice by making noise. A sliver of moonlight pierced the gloom, laying a skim of silver light upon his features and blue-black hair.
Save an owl’s hooting, silence fell between them. She hugged her comb and clothes closer, wondering if her state of undress bothered him. But why would it? The worn linen was like a tent, disguising every hill and valley of her. She minded her hair the most, hanging free with a will of its own, buckling and curling in the damp heat of a summer’s night.
“Seems like we should make proper introductions.” His eyes seemed to dance. “Your brother calls you Temperance. Your ma calls you Tempe Grace. Levi Todd referred to you as Tem Tucker. I’m not sure what a borderman like myself would say.”
“Just Tempe.”
His chuckle returned her to their first meeting when she’d told him the same. It dawned on her with another fearsome pang that he knew her last name. But it was common enough in the colonies. There were as many Tuckers as Boones and Callaways. Pa was . . . safe.
“And you?” She well knew his name but wanted to hear it outright as if it would take away the remaining awkwardness between them. She would have her clamoring questions answered, Lord willing.
“Sion Silvanus Morgan.”
Her nose nearly wrinkled. An odd name, Sion.
As if reading her thoughts he said quietly, “It’s Welsh.” He rested his gun on the ground. “Means ‘God is gracious.’”
Oh? Not just a comely name but a godly one. She’d not belabor the meaning of hers. She’d always thought Temperance plain, as parsimonious as its origin. Her middle name, Grace, suited her fancy far better.
“Well, Temperance Grace Tucker . . . I had no inkling you were so fine a shot.”
The compliment begged explanation. She couldn’t tell him about their sojourn at Blackmore’s Fort. It would lead like a trail of bread crumbs to Pa’s misdeed. A chill spilled over her, raising gooseflesh. Maybe Sion already knew and was drawing closer, using her to reach her father. The bounty was ample, his for the taking. Far easier gotten than surveyor’s pay.
The comb’s teeth bit into her palm. Other settlement women sprang to mind. “There’s more than Jane Menifee and Esther Whitley who are good with a gun. Some can stand up to a loophole as well as any man. Better betimes.”
“Can you reload on the run?”
“No call to.”
“Pray you never will.” He looked away. “What do you know of the Green River country?”
The Green. The name brought a strange wistfulness. She thought of all her tramping to the west with Pa, their favorite haunts, the forbidden places. “There’s a nest of rivers that way. Caves and canebrakes. A few rogue Cherokee roam—”
“Chickamaugas, you mean?”
She gave a nod. “But no settlers to speak of.”
“I’m in need of a guide.” He was looking at her again, weighing, studying, sifting. Awaiting her reaction. “That would be you.”
“I’m a good many things on any given day, but I’m no guide.” She nearly squirmed beneath his scrutiny . . . and her in her shift. What would it be like on the trail with him and a passel of men, day in and day out? What respectable woman would bend to such a task?
His gaze never wavered. “If a woman can stand up to a loophole as good as a man, what would hinder her from being a guide?”
“I’ve never heard of such.”
“Be the first.”
She nearly rolled her eyes. Yet he made it sound so doable . . . almost tempting. Stubbornness took hold. She’d heard of camp followers and cooks with the army in the East, most of them slatternly, it was said. She raised her chin. “And besmirch my reputation . . .”
“I can promise your reputation would never be besmirched. No man would lay a hand on you—or an errant look. You’d be addressed however you wish. Draw fair wages.”
“What need have I of wages?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “You might go over mountain and want a pretty dress. A bit of lace.” He looked to her feet. “Some shoes.”
She laughed at this flight of fancy. “I have all three right here. And a moonbow besides.” Stepping around him, she started up the trail only to stop again at the sound of his voice.
“A moonbow?”
She faced him again, drawn by his earnest query. “It’s a wonderment, I’ll give you that, if the signs are right.”
“The signs?”
“A full moon . . . ample mist . . . patience.”
He studied the sky. “Patience I have. The moon looks fair enough. I don’t know about the mist.”
She smiled without wanting to. He’d removed his hat and angled it over his heart. Whether deliberately or without guile she didn’t know. The effect was the same. For a few light-headed seconds she forgot her shift. Her tumbled hair. Her resistance.
“You could tarry awhile,” he said.
Was he asking her to walk out with him? Or sway her into accepting his offer to be a guide?
“I misdoubt you need a guide, be it for the moonbow or the wilderness.” She meant it as a compliment, but he might not take it as such.
His face, so plain before, was cast in darkness as the clouds shifted. She took a last hard look at him before continuing up the trail to home. When she reached the top of the rise she turned round again. But he was gone, the slip of trail bereft.
And she felt oddly bereft herself.
10
Behold, I Myself have created the smith who blows the fires of coals and brings out a weapon for its work.
ISAIAH 54:16 NASB
Sion had watched many blacksmiths, but few with the art and skill of Tempe’s brother. Russell stood in the barn-shed turned smithy the next morning, leather apron hugging his narrow waist. The small stone furnace glowed when a bellows belched air at necessary intervals, stoking the flames. Sweat ran in shiny rivulets down his half-bearded face as he
hammered and turned an orangey morass of ore into a horseshoe. He was a forge master, such a melding of muscle and intensity that one soon forgot his lameness.
Russell didn’t look up, just kept to the task in that almost effortless, unfailing way that made Sion want to try his hand at it too. He seemed unaware of Sion’s entrance, or mayhap rued the interruption. Or had overlooked Sion entirely.
There was a queer vacancy about Russell sometimes, a sort of otherworldliness, of not being fully present. Sion had seen that same blankness in other men, those marked by bloodshed and tragedy. His thoughts spun back to ’73 when Boone and a large party had failed to gain Kentucke and Boone lost his son. He recalled newspaper accounts of the day. Others besides James Boone had died. Had Russell somehow been a part of that?
“Where do you get your ore?” Sion asked, eyes roaming the rough walls adorned with the work of Russell’s blackened hands. Clearly, material was not a hindrance to Russell’s industry. Sion took in all the means necessary to subdue the wilderness. Hammers and hoes. Axes and plowshares and pot hooks. Hinges and rims and harness fittings. Cowbells and froes.
“Ore? I dig it out of the mountainside. Plenty of wood handy to make charcoal too.”
“You’d do well in the settlements.”
“Someday this’ll be one.” Finishing the shoe, Russell began work on a link on the Gunter’s chain Sion had brought in.
Sion risked another question. “No other men about the place?”
“Mayhap in time. With two unwed women . . .”
Two? Tempe and the serving girl, Paige, Sion reckoned. But what about Russell’s own mother?
“Shouldn’t take too long.” Russell’s odd half smile was as crooked as his gait. “We need some least’uns running about.”
Sion’s thoughts clung to Aylee. Nate sure sat at attention when she came round. The widow Tucker, folks called her in hushed tones. Sion sensed it unwise to press the matter about what had happened to Mister Tucker. He’d heard of men walking off and never coming back, leaving their womenfolk ever wondering what happened to them. Harper had expressed such a fear, all but begged him to stay. A sharpness stitched across his chest. He’d not heeded her.
“And you?” Russell looked up briefly, startling Sion with his sudden affability. “Looking to settle out somewhere?”
“Nay. I’ve work to do. As soon as you mend that chain we’ll be on our way west.”
“West?” Raising a heavy hand, Russell swiped back a damp hank of hair. “That country’s a mite formidable. It’s big, barren. Some of those canebrakes are so thick you can wander for days. Best take a guide.”
“I tried. She refused me.”
Another crooked half smile. “Levi Todd had a bit of tomfoolery sending you to Tempe. But he was right about her knowing that part of Kentucke as well as any man who ever made a study of it. Maybe better.”
“I expect she’s needed here.”
“Ma would likely never forgive you if you took her away. Tempe lends her hand to just about everything.”
The prospect made Sion want to risk Aylee’s displeasure. Tempe could cook. Forage. Shoot. Track. Hunt. Run. Their forest chase was never far from his thoughts. The memory kept him on a short tether, always circling back to amuse him. Taunt him. Tempt him.
“What makes you so bent on the Green River country?”
“The Great Meadow’s been overrun with British-backed Indians. That leaves the land west of here. It’s ripe for settlement, or will be.”
“You might tussle with a Chickamauga or two.”
“What of their Scots Tory agent, Alexander Cameron? Doesn’t he keep the peace?”
“Scotchie? The redheaded Indian? He lives among the Cherokee, but the Chickamauga are beyond controlling.”
“You’ve not had any trouble here?”
Russell shook his head, eyes on his work. “None to speak of. There’s superstitions that come with these hills, this river. It’s sacred ground, a burial place. The ghosts of Azgens and such.”
Sion had heard the legends. The Azgens were a light-skinned, blue-eyed people from across the eastern sea. The Shawnee claimed Kentucke belonged to the white Azgen spirits, a murdered race. The Indians were a superstitious lot, mostly fearless yet easily frightened in terms of the supernatural and entirely committed to the British cause, which included driving the settlers back over the mountains.
Sion didn’t share Russell’s calm or confidence. A wilderness war was coming that made the war to the east look like child’s play. The trouble with the Kentucke settlements was just a foretaste. No doubt the Shawnee and Cherokee and their allies would strike here, at this very inn, hallowed ground or no. Sion intended to finish his work and be well out of the way before then.
The Gunter’s chain was finished, the conversation stalled. Sion caught a flash of movement pass by the barn-shed. Just Tempe armed with her hoe. On her way to the cornfield? He watched her a second longer than he should have.
Russell was studying him, understanding in his gaze. He gave a sly wink. “Careful, Morgan, lest you be inclined to stay.”
The large party of settlers encamped in their loft had decided to return to North Carolina and wait for a safer time to trespass into Kentucke’s heart. In their wake were abandoned belongings, a broken tool and misplaced knife, a forgotten cornhusk doll. Paige picked through the offerings beneath the stifling sun, gleeful over a lost shilling glinting in the tamped-down grass.
All morning they’d cleaned, scouring the scuffed keeping room floor with river sand to free it from tobacco stains and spills, washing the loft’s soiled bedding and airing the mattresses, finally beating the rugs. By suppertime it was only the four of them. Tempe took advantage of the long summer’s eve when the heat of the woods settled a bit and a coolness drifted up from the river, weariness slowing her steps as she made her way to the rockhouse.
The surveying party had come this way earlier in the day. It was Sion’s footprints she saw—nay, sought—among the dust and horse droppings. She fancied she could distinguish between Cornelius Lyon’s light, trifling gait and the deeper, slower tread of the silver-haired man. Indians toed inward but a white man walked wide, outward. Broken brush and tamped-down undergrowth showed their passing. She guessed they couldn’t help it, burdened by the surveying equipment as they were.
She might have been among them.
Sion’s startling offer still gnawed at her. Bestirred her sleep. What manner of person made such an unfitting proposal, exposing her to untold dangers and the attentions of too many men? Yet something indefinable filled her, a strange yearning she hadn’t experienced since James. It felt good to be wanted even if it was for mercenary means, to do a job usually done by a man.
Now she half regretted sending him away. Mayhap it would have been best if she’d softened her stance and taken in the moonbow with him at least. Only there’d been no moonbow. Not since the night she’d spent watching with Raven.
Half a mile more and her thoughts took a dangerous turn. What if . . . ? She frowned and fingered the knife in her pocket. What if Sion met up with Pa coming and going?
Lord, please . . . nay.
But the possibility stood. The Loyal Land Company surveyors couldn’t have picked a better time to intersect with August Tucker, who was heavily laden with trade goods and slow to return. Sion and his men were on the main westerly trace.
She veered off the deer path toward the rockhouse, empty as Lazarus’s tomb. How glad she would have been to find Pa here, trade goods scattered about, a feast for the eyes and heart.
A bat flew low, nearly skimming her head as it winged farther back into the cavern. Nothing was disturbed in the fortnight she’d been gone. All was as Pa had left it. Another worry took hold of her that had little to do with Sion’s men.
Might Pa have been delayed by something else?
The wilderness offered many ways of dying. Wild animals. Accident. Disease. Indians. Ruffians. It wasn’t herself that she feared for but those
she loved, Pa foremost.
As for her own death, she prayed it would be swift. A sudden fever. A fall from a cliff. A flint-tipped arrow straight to the heart.
Not slow and agonizing like James’s.
Forsaking the main trace, Sion followed a buffalo trail to a lick. Cane rimmed the outer edges, a sort of reedy prison offering temporary refuge but no liberating escape. They’d come thirty foot-scalding miles since daybreak by Sion’s calculations. Well beyond the Moonbow Inn.
And they were being followed.
No one seemed the wiser, though Nate was watching Sion hawk-like as if reading his consternation. With a low word to stand guard after herding the horses and equipment behind a canebrake, Sion doubled back off the trail.
He was glad to keep moving. When he stood still, gnats and biting flies swarmed him. His linsey-woolsey shirt was damp from exertion, and his hat had made a sticky mass of his hair. He started to climb, Annie in hand, three rifle balls in his mouth to keep it from drying out completely.
He gained a ridge and kept to the tree line, gaze never settling. When he saw what he sought, he expelled a relieved breath. A lone Indian. Young. Fleet of foot. An expert tracker. Fully exposed on the riverbank below and within rifle range.
If he sighted . . . fired . . .
It would be justice. Retribution. Revenge.
For Harper. For all that had been lost. For all that could never be regained.
He raised Annie, drawing a bead on the Indian’s bare back. His heart beat in his ears like the rush of birds’ wings.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
His hands shook. Emotion clouded his vision. The moment was lost.
Or mayhap redeemed in light of eternity.
A week passed. A tense, breathless week when the heat heralded late June and the garden slowly came into its own. Rotund melons and deep green cucumbers. Golden potatoes and pungent onions. Crookneck squash and gourds of all shapes and sizes. Climbing beans entwining leafy arms around everything.