Catherine’s mind reeled. Moreau had said the danger of British raiders coming to burn the harvest was past. Was his intelligence wrong? All that grain burning, when men were dying for want of it!
Timothy shook his head, chest still heaving. “I don’t know about wheat, but a man is trapped inside. I heard him.”
Catherine’s insides turned to lead. “Run to the cabin through the woods. Tell Captain Moreau his harvest is burning!”
The boy spun and ran, the soles of his bare feet pale flags against the night.
Ducking back into the trading post, Catherine grabbed two hatchets and handed one to Thankful. Hoisting fistfuls of skirts above their ankles, they ran together toward the fire.
Smoke stung Catherine’s eyes, but her feet felt nothing as they carried her over the ground. Behind her, twigs snapped and cracked. Thankful coughed but did not lag far behind.
Pushing through a copse of silver birch, Catherine saw it. Flames lapped at the sky from the old wooden structure Monsieur Langlois could not afford to rebuild in stone. Moreau had been so wary of fire all this time. It was hard to believe he would trust the harvest to a fire-prone structure, no matter how much credit he gave the reports that the British had halted their advance.
All of this passed through her mind in a fraction of a heartbeat while she moved toward the blaze, hatchet growing slippery in her sweaty grip. Timbers creaked and cracked like cannon fire. In a shower of sparks, a chunk of the roof collapsed.
“No!” Thankful cried.
A solitary figure came around one side of the building.
“Samuel?” Catherine ran closer.
But it was not a white man she saw. This one had brought an ax and was cutting a hole in the barn door.
“Joseph!” Catherine hurtled toward him.
Sweat beaded on his bronze head and rolled down his face. “Timothy told me before he told you. But I could smell the smoke myself.” A cloth tied over his nose and mouth muffled his voice.
Samuel shouted from inside, but his words were mere sounds beneath the roar of the fire.
Catherine raised her hatchet, slamming the blade into the wood planks of the door, then struggled to wrest her weapon free again.
“Get back!” Joseph shouted. “I will do this thing for you. You will only hurt yourself, or me, or the man you came to save. Stay back, you and Thankful both.” In the fire’s orange light, his eyes were veined red.
Tendrils of hair curled about Thankful’s stricken face, while loose strands hung at Catherine’s neck. An explosion of sparks outshone the stars, then turned to ash on the wind. The atmosphere was thick with the smell of burning wood. But scorched wheat or flour? She could not detect it.
Perhaps there was no wheat in that barn after all. Perhaps the only object of the arson was the prisoner inside. Either way, surely Captain Moreau would be here soon, after what she’d told Timothy to tell him. Was it Captain Moreau who wanted Samuel dead?
With a mighty heave, Joseph swung his ax into the door again, then pulled it free. Enough damage was done that his hands could find purchase and wrench a piece loose. He kicked in another, repeating the process until the hole was large enough to let a man through.
Catherine pivoted toward Thankful, whose face was white as the moon. With one hand, she grabbed her arm. “We go tonight.”
When Catherine turned back, to her horror, she saw that instead of Samuel coming out through the door, Joseph was ducking inside it. The burning barn had swallowed them both.
Thankful dropped her hatchet to the ground and then fell to her knees beside it.
Catherine ran to the barn door opening, choking on smoke and ash. Covering her nose and mouth with the end of her apron, she squinted inside. Beams groaned above her, spitting sparks into her hair, onto her hands and neck. Each was a white-hot quill digging into her flesh.
Half the barn was eaten away by fire already. If any grain had been stored there, it was destroyed. Samuel sat on the floor, flames creeping toward him from three sides. Ankles shackled, wrists bound, he was tied to the post of an empty horse stall.
Standing over him, Joseph brought a hunting knife from its sheath, the blade reflecting a red glare as he bent and cut the rope. Once freed, Samuel struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the door, followed closely by Joseph, who shoved him through the splintered opening. Sam cradled his arm.
“Get back,” Sam wheezed, but his legs proved as weak as his voice. Catherine caught him in her arms, and he shouted in pain. Joseph dragged them both away from the building and into the birch trees.
“My shoulder.” Samuel grimaced. “It’s dislocated again.”
“Lie down,” Joseph told him.
Catherine turned away. A loud pop, a brief cry, then nothing. “What happened?” She turned back to Samuel, unlocking the shackles with the key Timothy had spirited from Moreau.
Thankful scrambled to join them, hair slipping from the plait crowning her head, hatchet in her white-knuckled hand.
“Gabriel paid me a visit,” Sam said, “which he concluded by breaking his bottle of rum over my head. It knocked me senseless. I must have fallen forward, and my wrists jerked against the post to yank my shoulder out of place.” His explanation was peppered with coughs and gasps. Face screwed tight, he grunted with effort. “I can’t move my arm. I won’t be able to, at least not very well, for weeks.”
Ripping her apron from about her waist, Catherine fashioned a sling to keep his arm immobile and close to his chest, recalling his struggle to recover from the shoulder dislocation he suffered years ago.
She glanced at the dark scab slashing across his temple where Moreau had subdued him the day before. “Someone obviously wants you dead.” Gabriel was a menace, but he had paid for Samuel in order to work him, not kill him. This was either Moreau’s or Fontaine’s doing. She looked up at her brother. “He needs to leave.”
Joseph grunted an agreement. A scarlet stream twisted down his arm where a shard of wood in the door had snagged him. Catherine tore a strip from her hem and tied it firmly around his wound. “Nia:wen,” she told him, her hand on his back. Thank you.
They formed a tight knot, the four of them. “Moreau is coming, and soon,” Catherine said. “Even if he knows there was never any wheat stored here.”
“There wasn’t.” Sam coughed on the words. “Not one grain.”
Catherine nodded. “Even so, he will investigate, or pretend to. He cannot find you again. Nor us.” She pressed the key to the trading post into Joseph’s hand. “Give this to Bright Star. Ask her to pay the porters for me when they return. And please send some of the oysters to Yvette Trudeau, my milliner friend in Montreal. Do not charge her for them. Bright Star knows where to find her.” She paused. “When Moreau comes here, can you detain him? Will you?”
Joseph’s black eyes glinted with understanding. He knew what she meant to do.
Please, brother, do not stop me. Do not ask me to choose between your counsel and what my conviction tells me to do.
Joseph’s jaw tensed. A breathless moment passed before he exhaled and looked away. “How much time do you need?”
Chapter Eighteen
They could not go back the way they had come. Clouds passed over the moon like a length of gauze as Catherine led Samuel and Thankful in a wide circuit toward home. The carrying basket was packed and waiting, along with the bateau. All they needed to do was carefully time their reaching it.
As they entered a small wood of oak and maple, the darkness intensified. Sounds magnified. The dropping of acorns from branches above. An animal—an opossum, perhaps—skittering through the brush. Insects. Sam’s erratic, pain-saddled breathing. Footsteps.
Not her own.
The same instant she heard them, Samuel’s uninjured arm came around her waist and pulled her from the leaf-muffled path, and she pulled Thankful with her. Sam had holstered Thankful’s hatchet at his belt, and the handle poked at Catherine’s hip. Backed against an enormous tree trunk, they stood
drenched in shadows, as still as if they were on a hunt, but she felt as if they were prey. Bark pressed into her back through her gown and caught the pins from her hair. It tumbled down, a black veil over her shoulder.
Heat and tension radiated from Samuel’s body. The smell of smoke on his clothes was so overpowering that anyone could easily track them based on that alone. Catherine’s flesh seemed at war with itself. Her face burned with heat while her fingers were freezing cold. She listened, straining to filter nature’s night sounds from whoever was in pursuit. The hatchet grew heavy in her hand.
A bird whistled. A bird that had no business singing at this time of night.
“Catherine!” It was mere whisper, but she knew at once it came from Timothy. Fleet of foot, he was a shadow racing through the wood. “It’s safe, Catherine. Where are you?”
She stepped back into the path and caught his arm.
The boy jumped in surprise but quickly recovered. “The French captain is on his way, and that red-haired man with him. Their muskets are fixed with bayonets.”
Would they think Joseph had set the barn ablaze and punish him for an act he did not commit? “Timothy, run to the fire and warn Joseph the soldiers are armed for a fight. Thankful and Samuel and I must hurry back to the trading post. If we continue this way, our path is clear, yes?”
“Hen’en. But they will come looking for the captive, won’t they? They have a lantern.”
“Then we must hurry.”
“And I will throw them off your trail.” A dim flash of white teeth matched the grin she heard in his voice.
He sprinted toward the smoke and flames, and Catherine led Samuel and Thankful away. She glanced at Samuel, mindful of his injuries.
“Just how much does the boy know of our plans?” he rasped.
Catherine grasped Thankful’s hand to be sure she kept stride, and found it as cold as her own. “He knows I wanted to find you. He is the one who alerted us to the fire. He stole the key that unlocked your shackles. But if he is questioned, he’ll have nothing else to offer. Anyone would guess you’re running south, not north.”
“I’m indebted to him, and to Joseph.” Sam spoke through gritted teeth. “But the fewer we involve in this, the better.”
“I agree.” Tightening her grip on her weapon, she hastened all the more toward home.
When they emerged from the trees, a yellow light glowed in the parlor, a beacon. Just outside the wood’s edge, she turned to Samuel. “Take Thankful to the dock and get the bateau ready. I just need to pick up the carrying basket I left in the trading post.”
“Take Thankful?”
Catherine should have guessed this would concern him. The risks of their journey would begin almost immediately. Samuel’s injury meant he couldn’t help portage the rapids, so she would have to navigate them from the water. “She’s coming with us. You know I can’t leave her here with Gabriel and the soldiers. We’ll keep her safe. I’ve paddled through the rapids before.” But never at night.
He hesitated. “Would she not be safer in Kahnawake with your sister? She’s not made for the wilderness.”
“She doesn’t speak Mohawk. I don’t think she’d be comfortable there.”
“I’m not the girl you remember, Samuel.” Thankful’s quiet, clear voice pierced the growing tension. “I make my own decisions, and I choose to join you. Catherine will need help rowing. I may prove more capable than you think.” She tilted her head toward the docks and freed Catherine’s hands of the hatchet. “No time to waste.”
Samuel made no further argument. He would tend to Thankful’s needs, Catherine knew. But it struck her that doing so may also slow them down at a time when he could brook no delay.
Catherine spared only a moment to watch the two of them creep along the edge of the property before she hurried into the trading post. Samuel’s face fresh in her mind, she added a razor and strop to the carrying basket, along with shaving soap. After positioning the basket on her back, she placed the leather tumpline on her forehead and turned to leave.
A gleam near the ground stopped her. Bottles of rum seemed to wink at her from the floor. She never touched it, never drank it, never encouraged anyone else to, either. Yet it remained the most popular trade item at the post. In all likelihood, they may need it on the journey, should they meet someone unsatisfied with beads or linens. Ill at ease, she bent and picked up two bottles before stepping back into the night.
“Who’s there?” Gabriel’s voice sliced through her. He was three yards away, weaving toward her. “Marie-Catherine? Is that you?” The hope in his tone could only mean one thing—he’d slipped into the past again, where he pined for the daughter born to Isabelle.
He stood before her, unmoving. How much of her could he see in the dark? Braids unraveled, her hair fell to her knees, as long as Strong Wind’s had ever been. Her gown was French, sleeves edged in lace and skirts full with petticoats, but the strap crossing her brow held a Mohawk carrying basket to her back. Could he suspect she had filled it for the purpose of spiriting his military captive away?
“Papa.” She trusted the dark to hide the truth that this Marie-Catherine was as much Mohawk as French and no longer willing to serve him.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Do you need something?” But of course he did. What did he ever want from the post but rum? She wanted to rail at him for his cowardly habit, for using it as an excuse to hurt people, for sneaking into the barn and unleashing his frustration on a man who could not defend himself. Her grip tightened on the necks of the bottles she held, and she bridled the confrontation that sat ready on her tongue. Marshaling her thoughts, she took a different tack. “Another bottle, perhaps? Here.” She extended the rum and felt him take it from her.
Catherine had never offered alcohol to her father. If he was already too deep in his cups tonight to notice, she should consider it a mercy. But what she felt instead was a twisting in her gut, a tearing. It was one thing to watch Gabriel drink himself into oblivion, and another to have a hand in it. Men had died from overdrinking. Men had come to harm—Samuel had come to harm—from those who overdrank.
Many more die from war. Starvation, disease, battle. The thought jolted her from her reverie. Samuel and Thankful were waiting, and Moreau and Fontaine may be returning with news that Sam had escaped.
“Something wrong, daughter?” Perhaps he smelled the smoke on her.
At the moment, she was hard-pressed to name something that felt right. Forcing a smile into her voice, she replied, “I have business to attend to. Go on and rest, Papa. It’s getting late.” True, every word.
Catherine watched him shuffle back toward the house. The dew-heavy air settled on her skin, and an owl gurgled into the night. Lantern light bobbed in the distance, flickering through the trees. Moreau’s voice filtered with it, calling for her father. For her.
Snatching one more bottle of rum, Catherine rushed to the dock, the tumpline digging into her forehead from the weight of the basket on her back. The river blinked and whispered in greeting as she dashed over the wooden planks.
“Gabriel! Catherine!” The captain’s shouts bounced off the water, making them seem closer than they truly were. “Thankful!”
Small white hands that had never touched a drop of alcohol reached up and took the bottles of rum from Catherine. Samuel took the basket with one arm. Catherine threw off the last rope looped around the piling and climbed into the bateau.
She signaled to Samuel and Thankful to lower their fair-haired profiles. Catherine’s dark tresses cloaked her, blending her silhouette into the sky. She shoved off from the dock, then dipped her oar into the river and pulled.
“Where are they, you old fool?” Moreau’s question to her father raised the hair on Catherine’s arms.
Wind cooled the sweat on her face and teased the ends of her fraying nerves. Samuel used his good arm to steer with an oar positioned off the stern like a rudder. As Thankful managed the other oar, the bateau glided
noiselessly down the river, straight for the rapids that lay ahead. Escaping one danger, Catherine steeled herself for the next.
Chapter Nineteen
The Lachine Rapids shone jet and silver as they churned between the two shores. Were it not for moonlight gleaming on the foam, there would be little distinguishing water from sky.
“Hold on,” Catherine urged, but Thankful and Samuel needed no prodding. Thankful’s lack of experience meant it was safer for her to draw her oar inside the vessel and let Samuel steer while Catherine rowed through the rapids alone.
The river kicked at the bateau in the dark. When the bow began to spin in the current’s whorl, warning licked through Catherine. She’d misjudged their position, had drifted too far from shore. If they were pulled into the eddies or boils, the river would flip them like a toy boat in a waterfall.
Darker shapes emerged from the river, islands Catherine had hopped across with Gabriel as a child. They should not be anywhere near them now. Calling directions to Samuel, she made deeper strokes with the oar, her stays pinching with every lean and heave.
Water misted her face and hands. Her energy surged, and her oar became an extension of her limbs. Catherine dipped the blade, skimming the surface until the vessel turned toward the riverbank. With shoulders and arms made stronger by sickle and scythe, she dug the oar in and pulled with all her might. She felt a sudden loosening in her movement as her dress tore beneath the arms.
The vessel bucked as it rode the river, and water sloshed over Catherine’s feet, soaking her hem. Had she been a fool to attempt the rapids? She let the question roll off her back, for there was no turning back now. All she needed was to get near shore and follow it downstream.
Catherine’s pulse roared to rival the river, and the oar grew slick with sweat and spray. Her senses strung tight, she gained her bearings and had Samuel steer the vessel toward the dark line of the south bank, where shallower water flowed more gently.
All at once, the bateau rolled violently to one side. Thankful screamed, Samuel shouted, water poured in, and then almost as quickly, they were righted—but unbalanced. Catherine watched Samuel haul Thankful back into the vessel, pain from the effort wrenching his face.
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