by Laura Frantz
She stared. Rarely did he speak of his crime, and yet he’d just admitted the gravity of it. “If you help Sion’s party, maybe Virginia will grant you clemency—pardon.”
“Likely this man Morgan will haul me to gaol. The courts.”
“He’s a good man. A just man.” Her voice shook. “Do what is right—”
“And risk my daughter besides?” His eyes held hers, tender and flinty by turns. “What is this surveyor to you? This Sion?”
She dashed her tears away with her good hand, forcing the memory of James to retreat. To lose them both . . . “He’s to be my husband.”
“You love him?”
Her eyes filled again. “Aye, like James.” But this wasn’t entirely true. Loving James had been new, almost sacred. Uncommon sweet. With Sion it was more seasoned. But both were deep. Rich. Enduring.
She shifted her gaze to the front of the rockhouse, ever wary. Daylight was draining away. She wanted nothing more than to blot out all the heartache and fall down on the buffalo robe bed bunched along one rock wall and sleep.
“I’ll dress your wound.”
Heartsick, she stared at him. Was this all she could expect? She bit her tongue to keep from lashing out at his foolishness. His heartlessness. Yet as he concocted a poultice, he asked careful questions of all that had happened since the ambush. What sign had she seen? Where did she lose their trail? Who had made up the war party?
She tried to keep the despair from her voice, but firmly fixed in her mind was Ma’s little leather book now turned to ashes. The Reckoning bore the names of one too many would-be Kentuckians and countless surveyors. She’d tried to purge from her thoughts their terrible fates, but they’d rent a gash in her mind like the gash in her leg.
“You’re in a bad way.”
His concern was making her antsy. She had no time to spend on a wound. Many had fared worse and lived.
“You belong overmountain with your ma.”
When he’d finished with her leg she made light of her hand, looking to the rifles but knowing they’d be of little use to her. How would she pull the trigger? She took the lightest one anyway, communicating her intent with a look. He made no move to stop her, instead gathering a canteen and provisions, meager as they were. It was Ma’s overflowing table she missed. Platters of fried fish. Mounds of hominy and gravy and green beans. Hunger made her light-headed.
Down the hanging ladder she went, gun in the crook of her arm, without another word to Pa. She didn’t trust herself to speak except to spew ugly words that couldn’t be taken back.
It took precious minutes to trade horses. The mare she exchanged for Pa’s gelding. It took to the woods with a readiness she sorely needed, allowing her to eat of the rockahominy he’d given her. She felt light as dandelion down, her time spent on the trail whittling her away.
There was naught to do but retrace her steps. Return to the place she’d lost the war party’s trail. Pray for direction. Protection.
Miracles.
Their days had faded to a bewildering sameness, but Sion’s emotions stayed fevered. He felt he’d lost his way, like a hapless boy separated from his father. Again and again he glanced back, praying Nate would reappear, earning another blow each time he looked. But the battering of his body was in no way like the battering of his soul.
He could not ask the chain carriers what they’d seen or heard. The Indians were careful to keep them apart, paying particular heed to Sion as if they were reserving him for some singular purpose. When his dread was heaviest, he knew Nate had been right. Once in the Indian towns—Chota or Toqua or wherever it was they were headed—they meant to burn him.
This alone eased his anguish over the old man. If Nate was dead, he’d been spared the torment of the stake. Sure of what lay ahead, Sion forced himself to eat the bear meat and deer collops, keeping his strength, studying his captors, praying for an opportune moment.
The warriors were growing easier now, their talk and mannerisms less guarded. How many days since the ambush? They’d come to another nameless river so shrunken by summer they forded it without pause. That night they camped near a lick tramped down by game, summer’s flowers on the wane. The weather took a turn, a drenching rain soaking them as if ushering in autumn. Strangely chilled, Sion watched as a fire was built of deadwood, smoke pluming low till the weather cleared.
Hascal and Spencer were looking lean and sunburnt, their clothes in tatters. He caught their questioning stares, their unvarnished fear. They kept glancing at him as if expecting something. Some help. Some action.
Sion recognized his and Cornelius’s saddlebags as two warriors brought them forward. They’d waited till now to divide up the spoils, intent as they were to leave Kentucke’s middle ground. His chest clenched at the realization of what they were about to do. When the fire’s flame grew hotter and brighter, the bags were opened and the contents spilled out. Ruthlessly, dark fingers dug through the belongings and deemed them worthless. Cornelius’s detailed maps of the Kentucke territory, his own precious field book with countless notes and computations, the hard-won warrants for the surveys—they were fed to the fire till it blazed with the heat of the noon sun. Watching the destruction, Sion willed himself not to flinch. His work with the Loyal Land Company was finished. Staying stoic, he bled inside.
His focus narrowed as Cornelius’s flask was passed from warrior to warrior. The blood-warming spirits—brandy—chased away the damp in a way the crackling fire could not. He bent his head, wanting to make peace with Cornelius’s death and his own conflicted feelings.
Tied wrist and ankle, he tried to make sense of the Indians’ expressive, singsong talk. He knew a bit of Shawnee, that strangely mellifluous tongue, but little of the nasal Cherokee.
Five Killer and Sion’s guard, with his dangling ears slit and ornamented with silver baubles, were in a heated exchange, their rapid gestures slicing the air as they stood to one side of him. Were they arguing? About him? Sion shifted, the wet ground beneath him more mud puddle.
He was so weary he simply wanted to lie down on the ground and sleep. With a bittersweet pang, he recalled Tempe’s nightly ritual, so hallowed in memory when it had become almost routine before. He could picture her redding up the camp, preparing branches for bedding, chewing a sassafras twig to sweeten her breath. She’d close her eyes in what he thought was prayer after combing out her hair, her back to them in a show of modesty, and rebraid the winsome plait the rock slide had torn in two.
What had Raven done with her? He’d seen them together at the last, sensed her unspoken heartache over Raven’s duplicity. He understood the half-blood’s shifting allegiances. Raids were being made on the Cherokee towns by North Carolinians, bounties set for Indian scalps. Raven was caught in the conflict. And so was Sion.
He took a deep breath, inhaling smoke, ignoring his bruised ribs. The Indians’ rifles leaned against a forked pole a few feet to his right. Mist was curling in about the meadow, making it difficult to draw a bead or aim with any accuracy. The time had come. If he failed to break through, failed to make his escape, instant death would follow.
Lord, grant me speed. Be mine shield.
He struggled to his feet, requesting to be untied. The nearest warrior stared at his outstretched wrists, the tugs knotted tight, and likely thought he meant to make water. With a glance at Sion’s guard and the other surrounding Indians, the warrior sliced the tugs free, ready to oversee him at knife point while he relieved himself a few feet away.
Before the cut tugs touched the ground, Sion swung at the Indian with all his might, knocking him into the fire. With bull-like tenacity, Sion plunged through the midst of the unsuspecting warriors in his path, fire to his heels.
The damp twilight was rent by fierce yelps as the Indians came after him, howling their protests as he made for a copse of hickories.
Now was Spencer and Hascal’s best chance to do the same. He hit a curtain of mist, one Indian so close he fancied he felt his clutch. The thud of f
ootfalls and snap of breaking brush resembled a small army on the run.
To confuse them he darted to the right. The way was slippery but he was gaining ground, his need for Tempe driving him. He knew the Indian mind-set. For all their outrage, their furious pursuit, they’d respect him if he got away. They’d not call him squaw.
Down into a gully his strained legs took him, the way trammeled by buffalo and other game.
Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble; Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.
The Scripture, a favorite of Nate’s, sprang to mind unbidden.
He ran on, barely aware he was headed east. Toward the Moonbow. New life. Tempe.
If Tempe lived.
31
As we came along on Rock-Castle the path was narrow and along a precipice . . . the horse rubbed against a sapling . . . and pitched him over the precipice into the river.
—FRANCIS JACKSON
For miles Tempe had felt a crawling at her back, a sensation of being shadowed. Six hours ago she’d left Pa and the rockhouse, riding hard south, distressed the rain had stolen away any remaining sign of the war party. She longed for an imprint of a rifle butt in the soft earth, the passing of Indian ponies unshod. Anything telling.
At the fork in the trail where the war party had divided, she cut right. She knew to stay off the main traces, backtracking in spurts to confuse pursuers, walking atop deadfalls and in streams. Pa’s gelding was fleet but noisy. Overcome by the shadowy feeling, she finally slid to the ground and grabbed the halter, pulling her mount’s head down and backing off the trail into the bushes.
She waited for the shadowy sensation to take shape, listening for a soft, moccasined footfall or stirring of brush. Her gaze swung wide then lowered. There, crouched in the growth like a lamb with a hawk going over, she spied something pale and still.
Her heart clenched. Nate’s tobacco pipe?
She’d taken notice of it early in their journey. Fashioned of polished wood, not simple clay, it bore a bent stem stamped with a maker’s mark. The pipe had brought Nate hours of enjoyment. Far too valuable to be tossed aside, it lay in the weeds. She bit her lip to keep her sorrow in check, restraining herself from reaching for it.
Beside her, the gelding grew less quivery, ears less taut. She reached up a hand and stroked its sleek side. It wasn’t until the foreboding passed that she let her fingers curl round the pipe bowl, unleashing an avalanche of memories. Nate chuckling. Nate quoting Scripture. Nate praying. Nate being . . . Nate.
She felt deep in her being he was gone. That henceforth only his memory would warm her. Spirits sinking, she remounted and rode on. Was this a senseless chase? Had they all gone the way of Nate? The pain in her leg was no longer paramount. Sorrow welled instead.
Dusk closed in, the shrinking light drawing her eye to bits of cloth left hither and yon on brambles and brush. Cloth used for patches in someone’s gun? Aye. Whose, she didn’t know, but it marked the way plain.
When it was well past twilight she sought shelter in a cove, a little pocket of green hidden away from the Warrior’s Path. Back against a willow, rifle across her lap, she prepared to listen and catnap as night drew the curtain closed.
Exhausted, she fell into what seemed more unconsciousness than sleep, not waking till the next day’s sun foretold late morning, hours past the time she’d meant to rise and ride. Her head was full of dreams—bad dreams—of Sion, so dire that not even daylight could dispel them. Her sense of danger, always high, was quickening. It seemed she was on the verge of some greater calamity than any she had ever known, more hurtful than James and Powell Valley, of greater consequence than all the wreckage that had come after.
She was of a mind to turn back.
Only two warriors were in pursuit now, the fleetest of the bunch. Sion kept on with only one moccasin, having lost the other when the tug snapped. The ground became a gauntlet, tearing at the toughened soles of his exposed foot with every flying step.
Lungs heaving, he started to slow, his legs turning to molasses. Ahead was a thickset sycamore, recalling his and Tempe’s tryst. He hid behind it, bereft of every weapon, hardly daring to believe his ears. Had the chase finally ended? He nearly bent over double in relief.
Drinking in great gulps of air, he straightened. Listened. Flinched. The swift whoosh of a well-placed arrow smacked into him, pinning his left shoulder to the rough trunk. The fletching was still aquiver when he grabbed the thin shaft and wrenched it free, grinding his back teeth to quell a fierce yell.
Blood spattered his filthy shirt, the flint tip of the arrow firmly embedded in the bark as it let loose his shoulder. Muscle and sinew convulsed and burned, sending a trail of fire through his whole frame.
He looked about wildly. Knowing at least one brave was ahead of him, he cut to the north, ignoring the pulsing agony of his body as his shirt changed from dingy cream to flaming crimson.
Like a hare he darted this way and that, jumping over deadfalls and careening around boulders, running full tilt as night swept in, the beat of his heart pounding out two simple syllables.
Tempe. Tempe. Tempe.
Pa’s gelding took her atop a rocky ledge with such surefootedness she felt the daring creature had sprouted wings. At another time she’d have sought a less risky route, but the encouraging sign she found urged her on as much as circling buzzards pushed her back. She paused. Looked down.
Time and a pack of wolves had nearly turned Cornelius Lyon unrecognizable. ’Twas little more than the fancy shoe buckle that lay littered on the rock slab far below that confirmed it. But even at so sheer a drop, she would have known it was he. Given his quarrelsome nature, he’d likely outstripped the war party’s patience.
The fall itself had not been the end of him. He lay upon what resembled a red quilt, his life’s blood having soaked the ground beneath him. Denied a proper burial, he was left to the ravages of the wilderness.
Sickened, she turned away, the same nagging questions pelting her like buckshot. What if Sion was ahead . . . dead? What if she was to stumble across his unburied body? Too shaky to remount on the ribbon of trail, she led the horse along the sun-drenched ledge on foot, her every step a prayer.
He had gone miles and miles. Light-headed from a loss of blood, Sion slowed beneath a gibbous moon, ears still taut to any sound beyond that of a screech owl. God be praised, he’d gotten away. Had his chain carriers done the same in the confusion of the moment? Lucian?
His shoulder had stopped bleeding, but it was badly mangled. His shirt a red rag, he weighed removing his breeches, but the sight of so much pale skin might scare up more trouble. His usual leggings were packed away in his saddlebags, now Cherokee owned. Not all of him was as tobacco brown as his face and hands.
Pain pushed him beyond the point of hunger. Coming to a creek, he sat along the bank and cleaned both wound and shirt. The front of his shoulder was more easily tended, the back nigh impossible. Had he gotten all the arrow out? Or had it splintered inside him? Only time would answer. He needed Tempe’s quiet tending, wherever she was.
He stumbled on, switching his moccasin from one foot to the next, his soles as sore as his shoulder. Toward midnight, when he felt sure he’d put enough distance between him and his captors, he came across a downed hickory, large enough to crawl into and lay down undetected. He slept, unsure if he’d awake.
The cry of a grackle jerked him from sleep. Daybreak. He crawled out of the hollow tree like some forest creature. Pulling himself to his feet, he continued on. A cluster of grapes made his breakfast.
Toward noon he found the Warrior’s Path. A dangerous route, it was also his one hope of encountering a trader or longhunter. Smaller trails bisected it in places, but he headed east. Toward Tempe, if she still liv—
He cut off the thought with tomahawk-like swiftness, but even that took effort. His mind had turned to mush, and the mere thought of cornmeal, of eating, made him convulse with hunger. Chewing on a sassafras
twig, he walked on till he came to the place he’d last seen Nate.
Sorrow had eaten a pie-sized hole inside him. That, coupled with missing Tempe and the fate of the chain carriers and Lucian, turned him more hollow. Then and there he repented of his prayerlessness. His pride. His hatred of Cornelius, God forgive him.
He might have half a chance to make it back to the settlements but for his wound. Fever had set in, turning his innards to cotton. He couldn’t slake his thirst no matter how many springs he crossed. His heart seemed to beat clear up in his head, pounding out a punishing rhythm. And now, trail weary and worn with need, he was seeing things . . .
Just ahead of him down the trace came a bearish figure. Sion’s wariness quickened, sharpening his gaze. A giant. The horse beneath this Goliath seemed too small to hold him, his rifle of uncommon length. Something about the set of his features—his expression—bespoke familiarity. But in truth, Sion had never seen such a power of a person. In his fever-addled state, the man seemed to dominate the trees and rocks and hills.
Sion wanted to get out of his way, but his sojourn had so sapped him his every thought was delayed. The buckskin-clad stranger had seen him, was even now riding slightly off the trace straight for him. Beside him, trotting with a bit of a gimp—could it be?—was Smokey.
Nay. His fevered brain was conjuring things. Smokey was leagues away, back at the Moonbow Inn . . .
The giant spoke. “Be you Sion Morgan?”
Sion heard a few cloudy words, but they failed to take root. Exhaustion and fever flung the question away. He stumbled over a stone in his path, his remaining moccasin coming free. He bent to shoe his most tender foot, then straightened, head swirling before fading to black.
Pitching forward, Sion fell in a heap at the stranger’s feet.
From her brushy perch, Tempe counted fifteen warriors . . . and two chain carriers. Nate and Sion were missing. And Lucian—where was Lucian? As she thought it, he emerged from the trees into a clearing where the Indians had made camp.