Lori Benton

by Burning Sky

  He might actually have liked Neil MacGregor, had Burning Sky not stood between them.

  Retrieving his mare, he moved off through the forest to find a place where he might bide the night in safety. He needed to pray and make ready his spirit for what he meant soon to do.

  And put into practice for himself the trust in God he had always preached to Burning Sky.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “You sure it isn’t twins, Dr. MacGregor?” Anni Keppler asked as she straightened her garments and pushed herself upright on the bed.

  “As sure as I can be,” Neil said, having already admitted that he’d had little practice tending expectant mothers, even before deciding he’d rather be drawing plants than prescribing them. “I didna feel but the one head and two wee feet.”

  Charles hovered at the foot of the bed. “That’s a relief. Don’t know why you came back, Doc, but I’ll be glad to have you by when Anni’s time comes.”

  Almost before Neil had unrolled his blankets on the spare bunk behind the smithy, folk began trickling in for doctoring. Despite the scarcity of medicines to hand, their need filled up his days of waiting—on the Lord, on the mail, and on Willa.

  When Charles stepped into the front room, leaving them momentarily alone, Anni fixed him with a knowing look. “Have you seen Willa since that day at the mill?”

  Her expressive face reminded him of that first morning at Willa’s cabin, when she’d burst from the woods, eager to reunite with a friend she’d thought forever lost. “No, I havena,” he said as he helped Anni to her feet.

  For more than a week now, Willa had stayed rooted to her cabin and fields. If only a letter would arrive, he’d have an excuse for riding out to her.

  “I’ve wanted to ask”—Anni lowered her voice, glancing at the door and the unshuttered window—“whether that brother of hers is still about. The Mohawk, I mean.”

  “She told you about him?” he asked in surprise, though the answer was obvious.

  Anni’s gaze was searching. “He was meant to go away and take those children with him.”

  “He was.”

  “Yesterday Francis came here from Willa’s. He mentioned the children. They’re still there. I guess that means he is still somewhere nearby.” Anni sighed. “I told her it was dangerous. For everyone.” She crossed the room with the waddling gait of advanced pregnancy.

  “They both ken the danger,” he said, remembering Joseph Tames-His-Horse lying in Willa’s cabin with a bullet in his side.

  At the bedroom door, Anni paused. “Has Willa ever told you how her grandmother used to hide her books? Mrs. Mehler thought reading a waste of time, that it bred laziness. So Willa took to keeping her books on that little islet in the lake near their cabin … where she was taken.”

  Neil minded the ruined copy of Pamela. “She told me.”

  “She was stubborn even then, was Willa, and yet”—Anni frowned, as if searching for words—“she’s the nearest to a sister I ever had, and now that I have my sister back, I want to keep her. I know she’s making it hard, but if you love her, don’t give up on her.”

  She’d taken him so off guard with this plea Neil couldn’t for the life of him make his jaw work to reply.

  Into his silence she pressed, “Because if you do—love her, I mean—and she can be made to see what she has in you, maybe she won’t fight so hard to hold on to what doesn’t matter as much.”

  Anni placed a hand on his arm. “Not that her land isn’t important, or that I want to see her lose it. It’s only that something’s broken in Willa, and instead of facing it, she’s hiding behind her anger and resolve like the walls of a fort, shutting everyone out.”

  “Not broken,” he said. “Bruised, and verra badly so, but …” A bruised reed shall he not break.

  Please, he prayed, as he met Anni’s earnest, troubled blue eyes. “Think of all she’s lost. We went through the same war, but we at least can claim a remnant of who we were before. Willa lost two families, two lives, utterly. All but the land.”

  And Joseph. But he didn’t say that.

  “I fear what else she might lose, trying to save it.” Anni let her hand fall from his sleeve. “And I fear losing her again.”

  “I willna give up on Willa,” he said. “Before God, I promise ye that. Not unless a day comes I’m sure that’s what He’s asking of me.” Even if that meant he lost everything, in the end.

  Anni’s eyes shone. “Then neither will I.”

  Neil followed her into the front room. The cabin door swung wide enough for a small blond head to poke in. Samuel.

  “Mama? Can we come back in?”

  While Charles tended the stew bubbling over the fire, Anni eased herself down at the table, rubbing at her back. “I hear your stomach gnawing your backbone from here. Come on.”

  Both the twins rushed in.

  Neil, taking this as his cue to leave, was startled to find the Colonel had arrived and was tapping dottle from a pipe over the porch railing. He didn’t follow his grandchildren in. Instead, he turned to walk with Neil beyond the light from the cabin door toward the mill path, his limp more noticeable without his stick, left on the porch.

  Though twilight had fallen, the day’s warmth lingered. The last of the season’s fireflies lit random sparks in the grass. What Neil hoped was the last of the season’s mosquitoes whined about his ears.

  “I wanted to thank you for your care of my daughter,” Waring said, holding his unlit pipe by the bowl, white stem resting along his forearm. “I’m relieved to see you return to Shiloh. We certainly stand in need of a doctor.”

  “I’ve been kept busy, true enough.”

  The Colonel made a sound of affirmation. “I cannot help but notice where you’re bunking at present. Other arrangements could be made, if you intend to make this situation permanent. Or have you arrangements of your own in mind?”

  Neil was glad for the twilight that hid his warming face. “I willna say my purpose in coming back had naught to do with Willa Obenchain. She’s determined to have naught to do with me just now, though.”

  The Colonel gave a wry snort. “Determined, is she?”

  Neil chuckled at that, but as always in the man’s presence, he could not feel wholly at ease. Perhaps it was only the specter of his son, who as far as Neil could tell had kept himself on his own land since making his offer of tenancy and had left off plaguing Willa about hers. Unless that crop fire had been at his instigation.

  When Elias Waring spoke again, it was clear his thoughts had gone to his eldest son as well, though in a very different light.

  “You realize, had Willa never returned, there isn’t a man in Shiloh who’d blink twice at Richard purchasing that land at auction.” The Colonel put his pipe stem to his mouth, then lowered it. “While I’ve every sympathy for her plight, my son isn’t the villain here.”

  Had Willa never returned … How many others in Shiloh had had the same thought? No doubt Richard Waring had chewed on it for months, like a dog worrying marrow from a bone. “Nor is Willa in the wrong for wanting to prove the government has no claim of confiscation.”

  “I’ve never thought her so,” the Colonel said. “I do, however, have cause to think her unwise.”

  Neil felt a crawling up his spine. As supportive of Willa as the man had been, if forced to choose between her interests and his son’s, Neil was in little doubt at this moment which way the man would lean. “What cause?”

  The Colonel crossed his arms. “My daughter should learn to shutter her window before she speaks of things she’d rather not have overheard.”

  Neil tried to swallow, but his mouth had dried. “What d’ye mean by that, sir?”

  The Colonel’s pipe stem pointed at him like an accusing finger. “If what Anni said is true and there’s a Mohawk involved in these matters—not a couple of half-breed children but a warrior, here by Willa’s leave—then I’d be keen to hear what you know of him and his business in Shiloh.”

  Two days later, in t
he room behind the smithy, ostensibly at work, Neil couldn’t put from his mind the final moments of his conversation with the Colonel in the Kepplers’ yard.

  “If what Anni said is true and there’s a Mohawk involved in these matters …”

  Neil had slapped at a mosquito biting his neck and rubbed at the spot, giving himself space to think through his reply. “His business in Shiloh, so far as I ken, has naught to do with anything but Willa. He’s something of a brother to her, as the Mohawks reckon these things. He’s hunting for her, is all.”

  That wasn’t all, but he hadn’t voiced his lingering worry that Joseph might, in the end, convince Willa to go back to their people. Perhaps the Colonel had sensed that hidden worry, for he’d rephrased his question several times to no avail. There was nothing more Neil could add.

  He shook his head now and put pen to paper, but found the ink had dried on his quill. Spread on the table were his newest field sketches, a few plant specimens, and the sheet of foolscap he was meant to be filling with a drawing fit for the pages of a field guide. He was in no frame of mind for the work. He wanted companionship, conversation, but there was no one with whom he could discuss the matters troubling his soul. No one but Willa. The impulse to go to her was constant, despite the inner voice that cautioned doing so now would end badly.

  He spread a cloth over his work, then went around to the smithy. Judging by the noise and heat from the forge, MacNab was busy, but the man didn’t mind if he took a notion to sit by, provided he kept out of the way.

  The tall blazed mare hitched in the yard brought him to a halt before the clang of metal ceased and Richard Waring’s voice rose.

  “It’s the blasted right hind shoe again …”

  Neil did an about-face and headed instead for Keegan’s store. He glanced back when he reached the oak-shaded porch to find Richard standing in the smithy yard staring after him, looking on the verge of following.

  Neil ducked inside the store. The only occupant of the densely stocked front room was Keegan’s old mother, seated in a rocking chair near the counter, keeping herself in motion with one crooked bare foot.

  “Good day to ye, ma’am,” Neil said, though the vague blue eyes she flicked at him bore no recognition.

  The sound of his voice brought Keegan from the taproom, wiping his hands on a rag. “Doc. Wondered when I’d be seeing your face today.”

  Neil’s mouth lifted at the corner. He’d come in nearly every day since his return, checking for mail. “Aye. Though I’m also wondering after your mother here.” Glancing at the woman’s wispy head, bobbing as she rocked, he lowered his voice. “You dinna have her tied to that chair, do ye?”

  Keegan grinned. “No need. Whatever bee she had in her cap to do with Willa Obenchain, it’s flown. She ain’t wandered off in weeks. Speaking of Willa, sorry. No mail for her. But there’s a letter come for you.”

  “For me?” Neil replied.

  “Before the sun was up. We’ve a rider on the route now will sometimes push on through the night, up from German Flats—which is jolly fine for those expecting mail, but not so convenient for those receiving it for ’em.” Complaining happily, Keegan fished behind the counter, coming up with a battered letter he handed to Neil.

  Though the seal wasn’t broken, the original direction had been scratched through and another—presumably Shiloh—written in its place. Neil paid for the letter, trying to decipher the return address. There was a B. He was almost certain of that. But did the surname begin with an R or a K?

  “Looks to have taken some pains to sniff you out.” Keegan craned his neck. “From a Benjamin Rush, in Philadelphia. Friend of yours?”

  “Aye.” Neil’s stomach took a plunge. There was only one reason Dr. Rush would be attempting to reach him by post. Though he wanted badly to ask Keegan to read the letter to him, doing so would equate to telling all of Shiloh his business. “What I canna account for is its finding me here.”

  Someone in Schenectady, one of those few who knew where he’d gone, must have chosen the farthest settlement to the westward they could name and sent it on in hopes of it reaching him.

  “Ironic that it did so,” he added, “while the letter that should come for Willa never has.”

  “Not since the last one, anyway.”

  Neil looked up from the letter in his hand, to stare at Jack Keegan. “What d’ye mean—the last one?”

  “The last letter.”

  “A letter came for Willa? You’re sure?”

  Keegan’s brows rose. “Sure as I can read my own name.”

  Neil felt the blood drain from his face. He forced himself to enunciate each word. “Who sent it?”

  “Dagna Mehler.”

  The thready voice came from behind Neil, but Jack only rolled his eyes. “Now, Ma. Don’t start that again.” He looked at Neil, apologetic. “Though I seem to recall it was from a woman …”

  “Dagna Fruehauf Mehler.” Maeve Keegan glared at her son, whose expression suddenly cleared.

  “Well, now, it was Fruehauf. But a different front name. Not Dagna, Ma, for crying out loud.”

  Not Dagna. Tilda.

  Neil heard himself ask how long ago this letter had passed through Keegan’s store. It seemed an age before Keegan admitted he couldn’t recall exactly when. “A while back. About the time you left. Or a bit after. Willa came in a time or two, and I finally told her should a letter come, I’d see it reached—”

  “Aye, man,” Neil cut in. “Whenever it came, where is it now?”

  Keegan stared. “I expect Willa has it. Where else would it be?”

  “You’re the one took it to her. You tell me.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Keegan said deliberately, as if Neil was slow to grasp the obvious.

  Neil felt his composure slipping.

  “Listen,” he began, then stopped. He could never say what made him turn to look at Keegan’s mother again. She sat in the chair rocking it as before, yet something about the woman was different.

  Then he knew. It was her eyes. They were clear now, penetrating as she gave him back his stare.

  Enlightenment was dawning, almost as clear. He turned to Jack, his heart beating with an ominous thud. “If you didna take it to her, who did?”

  “I’d meant to trot it over to the Kepplers, but didn’t after all, on account of Waring stopping in that day. He said he was riding out to her cabin to check on things so he’d save everyone the trouble. He took the letter himself.”

  Something like a fist squeezed Neil’s gut, reminding him of a certain morning in Willa’s cabin yard. “D’ye mean the Colonel? Did he take it to Willa?”

  “No,” Keegan said. “It was Richard Waring took the letter.”

  ’Twas clear now why they’d had no answer from Tilda Fruehauf—and why Waring had seemed content to leave Willa alone and bide his time; that letter had never reached her. Of this Neil was certain. Whether it had contained news in Willa’s favor or not, Anni would have heard about it by now and would have told him. That the letter had contained news in Willa’s favor he was also certain, else Waring would have passed it along to her, if only to dash her hopes. Easy enough to explain its seal being disturbed, after so long a journey from Albany.

  Less apparent was what Neil was meant to do about it.

  Waring wasn’t likely to suffer a sudden pang of conscience and confess to stealing, and possibly destroying, the letter from Albany, along with whatever evidence—or promise of the same—in Willa’s favor it might have contained. Confronting Waring about the theft would prove useless—dangerous even, should it spur the man out of his complacency to some reckless act.

  Should he appeal to Elias Waring?

  No. Richard was bound to learn of it, and the result could be the same.

  Racing Seamus out to Willa’s cabin to tell her what he’d learned was an impulse harder to ignore. Later, he paced his small room, praying, thinking he’d talk it over with MacNab. While he waited for the smith to finish work, Neil came th
e nearest he had yet to ignoring the internal warning against pushing his presence upon Willa.

  It was while he waited that a curious—and worrying—thing occurred. Waring couldn’t have kent, standing in the smithy yard watching him enter the store, that Neil was about to discover the existence of the missing letter, but it seemed he suspected as much, for soon after Waring rode his freshly shod horse back in the direction of his farm, Aram Crane had ridden into Shiloh.

  Now the man was loitering at the mill, watching the track to Willa’s farm—as well as the only way to reach the Keppler’s cabin and the path that led from thence.

  Going to Willa now would be as good as admitting his knowledge of the theft. At first he thought he’d wait until nightfall. Surely they couldn’t mean to watch that track—and him—every hour of the day and night. But while he waited and paced, there came into Neil’s mind another action he could take. As the initial tide of outrage over the letter theft ebbed, he grew increasingly certain it was the right course.

  He could leave Shiloh—by a path no one would expect.

  Benjamin Rush’s letter, in reply to the letter he’d sent before leaving Schenectady that spring, didn’t contain the news Neil had feared—that he’d been recalled from his wilderness sojourn—though what the man had to relate was bad enough. The crux of it was that the Society was losing interest in his long-delayed expedition, or at least their interest in reimbursing him for any further expenses he had or would incur, or printing the body of his work should it be completed. The doctor had stated tactfully that should his letter find Neil before he was beyond its reach, some evidence of his progress sent in earnest of the completed manuscript might serve to fan the members’ flagging enthusiasm for the project. It was true that unavoidable delays had occurred, and that Neil was not to blame for them, but now that the war was over the Society was ready to regroup, and it was only natural that fresh visions, new directions, would supersede those that seemed of primary interest years ago …

  MacNab set the letter aside. “Did ye ne’er tell this Rush all of what befell ye?” The smith tapped his own forehead below the line of his hair, indicating Neil’s scar.