“Is everyone accounted for?” Vincent barked the question at the first man he came to. That man turned out to be Viktor Kalvis. Lines of confusion marred Kalvis’s weathered face, but immediately he straightened.
“I believe so.” Kalvis’s eyes moved as he scanned the gathered men. His accent seemed thicker than usual. “No. Wait. Where is Ackermann?”
Kalvis had barely asked the question before Vincent spotted Dale Ackermann a few yards away from the rest of the Crowmakers, staring out at the river.
“What happened out there?” That was Brian Byrne’s Irish lilt, although with less lilt than usual. Vincent swung his attention away from Ackermann and looked into the faces of the other men—Dutch and Irish and Lithuanian, tall and short and round and thin, but one thing in common. Too many wide eyes and white faces.
Vincent was abruptly pissed as hell.
“Two people almost died, that’s what happened,” Vincent said. He swung around, searching beneath the brimmed hats until he found Langston’s stupid face. “You.”
Langston blinked and stared blankly at Vincent.
“You went too far this time.” Vincent jabbed a finger at Langston. “That stunt could’ve killed somebody.”
Langston shook his head.
“It wasn’t me,” Langston said. His voice actually trembled.
That just made Vincent even angrier. He closed on Langston and shoved his finger right in the bastard’s face.
“Of course it was,” he said. “It’s always you. Anytime there’s trouble, it’s you, right in the middle of it.”
“Leave him alone. He didn’t do anything.”
Vincent swung around to confront the man who’d spoken. But it was Ger Owen, and Owen never spoke to Vincent, and it surprised Vincent enough that he hesitated. During that hesitation, a reasonable voice in the back of Vincent’s mind told him that Langston was as pale as everyone else, as scared and wrung-out looking.
“It wasn’t just his Crow,” Owen said.
“It wasn’t just the Crows,” Kellen said, stepping up beside Owen.
Vincent’s gut clenched, and he struggled not to reach out and shove Owen away from Kellen.
“Lieutenant Bradley.”
Ellis’s voice was like water thrown onto fire. Every man there stood straighter and turned toward him as he stalked into their loose circle. Vincent was no exception.
“Why aren’t these men moving?” Ellis asked, but he left no space for Vincent to answer before he turned and addressed them directly. “Get onto your horses, get your Crows settled, and form up behind the wagons. This is not a time or place for lengthy conversations.”
Not a single man questioned Ellis. They merely followed orders, mounting up and urging their horses away and into a loosely organized formation. Vincent thought at least part of their meek obedience might be that they were relieved to not have to talk anymore about what had just happened.
“Yes, sir,” Vincent said, although Ellis hadn’t given him a direct order.
“Not you, Lieutenant.” Ellis’s voice had dropped to a near whisper, but it was sharp enough to cut. “You will stand right here, and you will listen closely, oh so very closely, to my every word.”
Vincent had thought he’d seen Ellis’s anger before, but he had never heard such outright fury from the man. Vincent stood straighter yet and looked instinctively into Ellis’s face.
Ellis glared at Vincent—glared. That was something else Vincent had never seen, and God help him, he couldn’t look away from it.
No one remained near enough to overhear, but Ellis leaned closer anyhow.
“You were tasked with watching over Annie James,” Ellis said. “You did not do a very good job of it just now. What happened on that flatboat will never happen again.”
“No, sir,” Vincent managed to spit out. “I’m sorry. I—”
“I’m not sure, even now, that you take my words seriously enough,” Ellis said. “I don’t believe you truly understand. That child, what she knows—what she can do—are worth ten of every man here. Every man. Including her father. Certainly including your precious Miss Ward.”
Ellis paused for a breath and leaned a little back from Vincent again. Vincent dared to take a breath of his own.
“If anything happens to Annie James, Lieutenant Bradley, then your life is forfeit,” Ellis said. “Is that order clear enough for you?”
In all the months that Ellis had been issuing orders to Vincent, of all the times Ellis had pitched a question like this at Vincent, he’d almost always turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Vincent to respond to his departing back.
Ellis did not turn away this time. He waited, eyes boring into Vincent’s.
Vincent nodded. “Yes, sir. Very clear.”
“You had better hope so, Lieutenant.” Finally Ellis turned his gaze away from Vincent’s and scanned the formation of mounted Crowmakers gathering behind the wagons. “Now get these men moving.”
9
Kellen’s bay was still skittish as she nudged it onto the trail beyond the ferry house. She understood the skittishness—her insides quivered, and her heart beat a crazy rhythm against her ribs.
Don’t let it show, she reminded herself. You have to be as tough as the rest of them. Tougher. Act like it until you really are.
The wagons bumped along the rutted trace at the front of the line, Crowmakers trailing behind it. Ahead of Kellen rode sturdy Joseph Goodson. He kept the same steady, plodding pace he always did. Kellen kept her eyes on him, trying to draw calm from his calm.
Behind Kellen, Langston’s voice rose and fell as he filled in Rawle on everything that had happened, embellishing freely along the way. Kellen wanted very badly to wheel her horse around and ride Langston down, maybe even haul him from his saddle and shoot him—anything to shut him up. But that would mean showing how very far from cool and collected she really was. Even Jan Bosch, riding further up, was holding it together. His normally-red face was closer to white, but he kept his mouth shut and rode. She had to do at least that well, so she clenched her jaw and stared at Goodson’s broad back and kept riding.
She felt Ger watching her. He and Byrne rode just behind her; she’d deliberately nudged up alongside Colley to avoid the two of them. She didn’t need their questions or concern right now, she just needed to ride and not talk while she cleared her head. Colley had merely glanced at Kellen, his sharp blue eyes taking in her face. Then he’d faced forward and paid her not a single bit more attention. Thank God for Colley.
The trail wound at an incline away from the river and then turned back to follow the bluffs overlooking it. The river diminished to a glittering gray ribbon a safe distance below them. Kellen stared at the water, imagining choppy waves slapping against pilings—and Em Jacobs’ blood clouding the water.
It wasn’t my fault.
She shoved away a surge of guilt, but fear refused to budge. Something was out there. Maybe it wasn’t in the water, but the water had something to do with it. One thing was sure—it wasn’t just in her head, or even in hers and Ger’s. They’d all heard it. Even the Crows had picked up on it.
Thunder cracked, closer than before. Kellen gasped and jerked, without meaning to, against her reins. The thunder swallowed the sound she’d made, but her bay danced, as startled as she’d been. Kellen caught Ger and Byrne and even Colley looking at her.
“It’s only thunder,” she told her horse, steadying him with her knees. She looked up, but the sky to the northwest remained a heavy blue and still showed no sign of the rain that was surely coming.
Goodson clucked at his horse and slowed to a halt. Ahead, the wagons had stopped . Ellis rode back between them to join the other riders. He sat facing them from the head of their column. Vincent sat off to one side, tall and cool in his saddle.
Vincent had reached for her. When he’d thought she was in trouble, in spite of all the other shit that had been going on at the same time, the thing Vincent had been most worried about was her.
The knowledge twanged inside her, leaving an ache like an empty tooth socket except for the fact that it filled her whole body and left her breathless.
It didn’t matter. She shouldn’t care.
“Gentlemen.”
Ellis didn’t raise his voice. Ever. But it carried as well as it always did, just the same, like a carefully-aimed arrow that sliced the humid, gnat-laced air. Kellen was mildly grateful to set aside the fear and confusion gnawing at her and listen to him.
“Mr. James has offered his assurances that the incident which just occurred will be investigated,” Ellis said. “It is, of course, gravely important that no malfunctions prevent the use of the Crows.”
“Oh, of course,” Byrne murmured. Colley glanced his way and shook his head.
Byrne wasn’t the only Crowmaker who muttered. Kellen heard Langston’s voice behind her, and Rawle’s.
“In the meantime,” Ellis said, and then he paused and waited for silence to fall again. “The Crowmakers are incredibly specialized soldiers with advanced weaponry who will save the frontier from the murdering savages who victimize it. It is most important that we show no sign of weakness or doubt. We are depended upon to be strong; we must put forth at all costs that image.” Ellis paused again.
Act like you’re tough until you are. Kellen guessed maybe she wasn’t as alone in that as she’d thought.
“Are we understood?” Ellis asked.
He swept one last stern gaze over the Crowmakers and wheeled his horse without waiting for any actual answer.
10
August 1806
Indiana Territory: Grouseland
The trees still dripped with rain from the night before. The sound would have been peaceful, the rustle of leaves and plink of crystal droplets as they passed from one span of green to the next, a light melody played against the distant murmur of the Wabash River and the stirrings of the blue-coated Army regulars camped around the far side of Harrison’s mansion. The ever-present reminder of the river did nothing whatsoever to soothe Ger’s lingering worry over the events of the day before.
Even if not for that, the words Tucker Ellis currently spoke would have dashed any hope of idle musings about peace from Ger’s mind.
“We know from our experience with the southern tribes that the Indians are capable of great atrocities. They attack innocent settlers—murdering and scalping, stealing women and children, leaving no man alive.”
Ellis stood on Grouseland’s wide white steps, with the brick mansion as his backdrop. With Ellis’s carefully-groomed hair and perfectly-fitted breeches and jacket, he looked like he was exactly where he belonged. The Crowmakers faced him in a loose semi-circle on lower ground. That natural orator’s voice of his flowed through the uniformed Crowmakers like a velvet-wrapped brickbat, inspiring them all to good posture and strict attention even though they stood with muddy boots squelching on wet grass.
The man beside Ellis looked even more at home there. Which made sense, since William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, had picked out the land and formed it into an estate to suit his preferences, just as he intended to do with the entire territory—that latter all on behalf of the United States, of course.
Harrison was dressed every bit as well as Ellis, in a dark hunting jacket and well-shined boots. He had a hook nose and eyes that seemed to be looking into you and past you, all at the same time. He stood at ease, hands clasped behind his back. Still. Listening.
“We are hopeful that matters can be concluded with less bloodshed in the Indiana Territory than elsewhere.” Ellis paused to incline his head toward Harrison. “Governor Harrison has had some success in negotiating with the most vocal of the resistors, a village of Shawnee and their allies to the northeast, situated on land that other chiefs have already signed to the United States.”
Harrison returned Ellis’s acknowledging nod. But his feet also shifted, and his jaw clenched. From around back of the mansion, voices from the regulars camp rose and fell. Ger wondered how long they’d been there.
Ellis cleared his throat. “The governor has impressed upon the Shawnee leadership the seriousness of their situation. Their war chief and a small contingent are en route to Vincennes as we speak. They will arrive tomorrow.”
A few murmurs went up around Ger, though even Langston—and you just knew one of the murmurs came from him—kept it quiet enough that Ger couldn’t make out any words. Quiet was something they’d had plenty of since yesterday’s river crossing.
“Our regiment will provide… security.” Ellis’s mouth curled into a smirk. “Our mere presence should motivate the Shawnee war chief to treat Governor Harrison and the existing treaties with all due seriousness. If all goes well tomorrow, Tecumseh will return to his people an enlightened man, and he and his followers will leave the territory to migrate west.”
Early as it was, the clean-scented breeze had already begun to give way to sun-heated humidity. The air clung against Ger like a second skin. He ignored the sweat beading along the brim of his hat and kept his eyes on Ellis. As usual, Ellis packed a whole lot of meaning between the lines of the words he actually spoke. Who else could make enlightenment sound like a threat?
“You Crowmakers know your weapons. You know how to use them. How to control them.” Ellis paused. His gaze raked the ranks of dark uniforms and darker tattoos before him, and unspoken words filled his momentary silence. “All you must do now is your job.”
Don’t screw up. That’s what Ellis would have said, if he would ever speak such a crass thing out loud. It was advice Ger had been trying to follow all his life. Don’t screw up. Do something right for a change. Do something good. He’d thought he was on the right track.
Maybe he still was. Maybe he was overreacting to yesterday’s events. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as it seemed. It wasn’t like he had the whole story yet. None of them did.
“Dismissed.”
Ellis turned on his heel and marched into the manor, following Harrison. There was no sign of Vincent Bradley yet—Lieutenant Bradley—no barked orders or shouting about drill. The scent of cornbread and coffee wriggled through the humid air. Like puppets whose strings have slackened, the Crowmakers drooped from attention and into a dozen variations of a more relaxed posture. Most of them turned back toward the camp in the clearing, where the Locktons and Mrs. Epler bustled through their morning work.
Despite the rumbling of his stomach and the breakfast smells wafting from their camp, Ger lingered a few moments longer at the edge of the lawn, peering through the trees and back along the route they’d taken the day before. He could barely make out the road that led into Grouseland from the city of Vincennes.
City. To Ger, Vincennes had barely looked like a town, let alone the city-to-be Harrison had planned. It had been near evening when they’d reached Vincennes the day before, riding beneath a hard blue sky. As they’d raced dark clouds looming to the north, patchy fields of tall green corn had broken the monotony of the surrounding forest. Shortly after, the first sprawl of buildings had appeared. By the time the first fat drops of rain had fallen, the Vincennes trace had begun to more closely resemble a civilized street—rutted dirt but cleared of stumps and running mostly straight through what had once been no more than a trader’s post.
Vincennes looked like Ger felt, like a poseur clinging desperately to the hope of someday being more than he was.
Beyond Vincennes, the road followed the Wabash River toward Grouseland. From where he currently stood, Ger caught glimpses of the river’s wide sweep between green-laden branches and humidity-hazed tree trunks. It glinted silver now, but yesterday it had gone to tarnish under the heavy sky. The water looked friendly enough at the moment, but Ger had seen its darker face then.
The need to talk about what had happened at the ferry crossing flickered like a fitful flame in Ger’s gut, at war with a deep want to forget the whole thing. There’d been no time for talk the night before. Upon reaching Grouseland, Harrison’s man had directed the wa
gons and the riders past an existing clutter of mud-anchored tents to a leveled clearing beyond the knoll on which the governor’s mansion perched. As Tucker Ellis, accompanied by Samuel and Annie James, had followed Harrison’s man up the hill toward the house, the Crowmakers had raced to get tents up and the saddles and Crows stowed into the bells at the back of them before the storm hit in full.
Then the storm itself had blown through, low-key rumbles of thunder and a few bright flashes of lightning and rain that gusted against tent flaps for half of an hour before settling into a steady downpour. With the rain came a damp chill that had settled into Ger’s bones. They’d eaten cold rations in separate tents, with only the nightly gill of whiskey to offer warmth—no fire, no talking around the fire. No talking at all.
This morning, there were fires, for cooking and for gathering around in hopes of drying some of the damp from wet clothes and bodies. Ger couldn’t see the regular camp from where he stood, but smoke trickled up from the far side of the mansion, too, trapped by the low-hanging haze into a gray cloud.
By then, the rest of the Crowmakers had found their way to food and fire, so Ger turned that direction as well. Most days, there was talk and laughter at mealtimes. Today, there was none of that. Ger silently nodded thanks for hot cornbread and hotter coffee to Mrs. Epler and Mrs. Lockton and took his food to where the other Crowmakers had gathered.
A couple of stumps remained in place near where the fire had been built, and split wood had been dragged into place around its perimeter. The dozen soldiers, clad all alike in charcoal-colored uniforms and black tattoos, sat or stood or crouched with the fire at their center.The morning was warm, and the day would be hotter yet, but Ger drew close enough to feel the heat radiating toward him. He’d never dry out completely, not in this humidity, but the dry heat of the flames might eradicate some of his currently soggy state.
Kellen crouched beside the fire, hunched forward with a tin cup of coffee between her hands. She didn’t look up, not at Ger or at anyone else. In the early morning shade of the surrounding trees, the flickering light of the flames played with the lines and shadows of her face, twisting them into odd angles. Ger would have liked to talk to her alone, wanted to take her hand or put an arm around her. Or, hell, put both arms around her and pull her close. And not just to comfort her, but to comfort himself, too. But the two of them weren’t the only ones present, so even if she’d have let him, he couldn’t do any of those things.
Monsters of Our Own Making Page 10