Brock clicked the hammer on the gun’s lock several times to make sure it didn’t stick. He needed to know he could depend on his weapon if the Shawnee managed to sneak into the fort.
“You’re not thinking of going out there, are you?” Her worried tone touched Brock. Perhaps she still had a soft place in her heart for him. It warmed his heart to think so.
He rubbed the oily rag down the musket’s barrel, then set the gun aside. “Sooner or later, someone will have to try again, and I’d have a better chance than most. More than likely, there are just a handful of Shawnee keeping us in here.”
She rose and looked him directly in the eye. “Promise me you won’t go out there until the soldiers or the rangers come.”
Brock’s heart writhed. He wanted to do as she asked. He wanted to take her in his arms and promise her he would never leave her.
“I can’t do that, Annie. If help doesn’t come soon, I can’t just sit here and do nothing while a few renegade Shawnee starve us all to death.”
He stood and picked up his gun, his fingers convulsing around the smooth wood stock. “You once told me that your father said, ‘A soldier fights, but a coward runs.’ Well, I’m done running, Annie.”
Whirling on him, she let go a volley of angry-sounding French words. She glanced down at Cap’n Brody, then back up to him, tears shimmering in her flashing agate eyes. “Then your head is as hard as Cap’n Brody’s!”
His next words leaped from his mouth before he could stop them. “I’d say me and the cap’n are not the only ones with hard heads. Or maybe your time with the Shawnee has blinded you to the extent of the danger we are in.”
A myriad of emotions—shock, fury, and sadness—flashed from her watery eyes. Her chin trembled, and she shot him a withering look. “And maybe you’re more afraid of the soldiers and Colonel Stryker than you are of the Shawnee.”
Miserable, he stood on the porch and watched her stomp away toward her mule and cow—and Johann Arnholt. A few minutes ago he’d reveled in the chance to have a conversation with Annie that he didn’t have to share with anyone else. Now he’d ruined it and, most likely, the prospect of any further conversations with her.
“‘A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.’” Obadiah’s quiet voice behind Brock yanked him around.
“I reckon you heard that.” Brock had trouble meeting the preacher’s gaze.
Obadiah clasped a warm, comforting hand on Brock’s shoulder. “Me and most everyone else in the fort, I reckon,” he said with a friendly sounding chuckle.
Brock cast a sidelong glance at Obadiah. But instead of the disapproval he’d expected to see on the man’s face, he found only compassion. It encouraged him to unburden his heart.
With a deep sigh, Brock shoved his fingers through his hair. “I thought she wanted to get back to her cabin—back to her land. But when I said I might sneak out at night to get help, she got her back all up.”
“Perhaps she’s found something more important to her than the land.”
Nonplussed, Brock cocked his head and stared at the preacher, unable to deduce the man’s meaning. “Since I met Annie, nothing has been more important to her than that land, and keeping her word to her pa and Jonah.”
Obadiah placed a firm but gentle hand on Brock’s back and guided him to the end of the porch. Motioning for Brock to join him, he sat down and stretched out his legs, resting his crossed feet on the brownstone steps where Annie had sat a few moments earlier.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Obadiah looked out toward the stockade’s weathered posts. But the distant look in his eyes suggested he was seeing something else.
“A couple of years ago when Bess and I first came here, Bess was forever frettin’ about not havin’ any honey or sorgum for sweetin’.” He shot Brock a sidelong grin.
Perched on the edge of the porch, Brock leaned forward and rested his arms on the tops of his legs. He was obviously in for one of Obadiah’s famous yarns, so he might as well get comfortable.
“Well, sir,” Obadiah continued, “one day while Jonah, Annie’s pa, and I were out huntin’ deer, we came across Gray Feather. He said he’d found a bee tree a little ways down the trail and wondered if we had an ax. Gerard did, so we proceeded to the tree and commenced hackin’ it open.”
Brock couldn’t imagine what the preacher’s story about a bee tree could have to do with his argument with Annie. But a good story would be a welcome diversion from his worries.
Obadiah angled his barrel-chested torso toward Brock, his widening grin pushing up his bearded cheeks nearly to his eyes. “Well, sir, we’d just opened up that tree when the biggest black bear I ever saw come barrelin’ toward us, determined he was going to have that honey for himself.” A merry chuckle bubbled from the big man. “The four of us played tag with that bear around the honey tree for quite some time, neither us nor the bear willin’ to concede.”
Though still not grasping the point of the story, Brock laughed appreciatively, imagining the comic scene.
Growing quieter, Obadiah scratched his hairy chin. “We finally got off some good shots and ended up with a tree full of honey and bear meat to boot.”
“Reckon Bess was pretty happy about that, huh?” Brock wondered if Obadiah was trying to say Brock should offer Annie some kind of present.
Obadiah shook his head. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” His blue eyes twinkled. “When I got home and told her the tale, Bess tore into me like I’d done somethin’ awful.”
Brock was confused. “But you said she wanted the honey.”
“She was mad because I put myself in danger to get that honey.”
The preacher’s voice and smile softened. “Turns out, she’d rather have me than the honey. Or the bear meat, for that matter. And for that, I am eternally thankful to God,” he added with a little laugh.
Both men stood. Brock smiled and nodded, still unable to glean any kind of moral from the story. Perhaps after all, Obadiah had simply attempted to lift their spirits with the entertaining yarn.
Obadiah leveled a piercing look at Brock. “Annie loves you, Brock. She wants to keep you alive. That’s more important to her than gettin’ back into her cabin.”
His heart thumping harder, Brock looked with wonder across the stockade at Annie. She sat on a stool milking Persimmon and laughing up at Johann, who stood holding the cow still. Could Obadiah be right? Could Annie really love him?
Reality squeezed Brock’s heart. What did it matter? They had no chance for a future together. He had no future at all. “Annie would be better off with Johann—’bout anybody but me.” It was high time he told Obadiah of his predicament. “There’s another reason Annie doesn’t want me to fetch the rangers here. The Indians ain’t the only ones after my hide.”
“You’re in trouble with the army.” Obadiah’s quiet comment held no hint of a question, and Brock experienced a flash of disappointment. Annie must have told the Dunbars of his situation.
“Annie told you?” Brock gazed across the yard to the spot where she sat milking.
“No. She didn’t have to.” A grin touched Obadiah’s voice. “I may not look like the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can add two and two. You come here out o’ nowhere, cloister yourself out there in Gerard’s old cabin and stay shy of the fort, especially when soldiers are about. Didn’t take much figurin’ to see you’re runnin’ from somethin’, and I reckoned it was the army.”
Brock snorted a half laugh. “The way you put it, I might as well have had FUGITIVE written across my forehead.”
“Care to tell me why?” Obadiah crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder against the garrison house wall.
Brock recounted the tragic events that led to his desertion. “If your conscience prods you to turn me in should we make it through this siege, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
Obadiah straightened and clapped a hand on Brock’s shoulder. “Son, I consider what you told me a confidence. I�
��ll share it with no one but Bess, and she’d take it to her grave if I asked her to. It’s a powerful burden you carry, for sure. I’ll be praying God guides your decision on the matter.”
Brock was about to thank Obadiah when Amos Buxton strode down the porch toward them, his face grim.
“Obadiah. Brock. Have you taken a good look at the creek today?” His voice sounded tight, and he drew a shaky hand across his whiskered face. “There ain’t hardly more than a trickle of water runnin’ through it.” A look of mounting panic shone in his eyes. “Me and Joel Tanner think the Shawnee have dammed it up somewhere outside the fort to deprive us of water.”
Chapter 16
You gotta eat somethin’—for the babe’s sake.”
At Bess’s cajoling tone, Annie looked up from her spot on the floor beside the garrison house hearth. She stopped humming a tune to the toddler she cradled in her arms. Her empty stomach rumbled as she eyed the johnnycake nestled in the scrap of linen Bess held out to her.
“Non.” She shook her head despite her grinding hunger. This morning she’d learned that the fort’s store of cornmeal had dwindled to less than half a barrel. How could she eat knowing she’d be depriving a child or nursing mother of another morsel of sustenance.
Annie shifted the sleeping, sweaty, two-year-old to a more comfortable position on her lap. Her gaze slid to Abbey Graham who sat hunched in the corner, her back to the room, discreetly feeding the twin to the child Annie held.
“Give it to Abbey. She has two babies to feed.”
Bess settled herself beside Annie and set the cloth with the johnnycake on the floor between them. She reached over and gently lifted the sleeping child from Annie’s arms. “Eat the johnnycake, Annie. Abbey had two cakes a while ago.” She began rocking the little boy who popped a thumb in his mouth and started sucking noisily. “She’s already fed little Aquilla here, and says she still has enough milk for Priscilla.” She glanced at Annie’s distended middle. “Your babe needs food, too.”
Reaching for the piece of fried corn bread, Annie assuaged her guilt with the knowledge that Bess was right. While denying herself nourishment, she also denied her unborn child.
“Has your babe moved at all, today?”
Bess’s quiet question sent a renewed wave of concern rolling through Annie. In the two days since the Indians dammed the creek, severely restricting the fort’s water supply, she’d noticed with alarm, much less movement by her baby.
“A little,” Annie murmured before taking a bite of johnnycake. She pressed her hand against her abdomen, praying for a kick, a twitch … any movement at all.
“Don’t you worry none, Annie.” A kind smile embroidered Bess’s voice. “That babe will take all the nourishment it needs. Like the rest of us, it’s just slowin’ down so it can manage on less food.”
Praying Bess was right, Annie rolled the meal in her mouth, luxuriating in its greasy taste and grainy texture against her tongue. This morning she’d allowed herself a sip of milk, but the fried cake was the first solid food she’d eaten since early yesterday.
She glanced around to see if anyone noticed her eating. Since her return to Deux Fleuves, some of her neighbors had begun treating her differently. Their furtive glances in her direction followed by whispers made her wonder if they believed the child she carried was Shawnee. Whatever the cause of their unfriendliness, their chilly attitudes heightened her guilt at eating even a morsel of food.
Glancing at the folks milling about the garrison house and coming and going through the building’s open door, she kept her voice low. “Some treat me like I’m the enemy—or I’m dirty.” She managed to swallow the bite of cornmeal that had turned to a hard lump in her dry mouth. “C’est évident. They think because I lived with the Shawnee, I do not deserve this.” She held up the johnnycake, then dropped it into her lap.
Bess leveled a no-nonsense look at Annie, and her voice turned stern. “Anybody who begrudges you food because the Shawnee carried you off ain’t practicin’ their Christianity. Starvin’ yourself and your babe won’t make the Indians go away.”
The memory of Brock’s words still jabbed at Annie’s heart. “Even Brock accused me of not seeing the danger we’re in because of my time with the Shawnee.”
Bess’s smile turned kind, and she touched Annie’s arm. “Now, don’t you go takin’ that to heart, Annie.”
Abbey Graham approached, and Bess became quiet. With a murmur of thanks, the young mother took her sleeping child from Bess’s arms and retreated to a corner of the room to tend her children. When she’d gone, Bess turned back to Annie with a sigh. “Brock knows you better than that. You ask me, it’s the worry talkin’. Worry will cause a body to say hurtful things—things they don’t mean—to the ones they care for most.”
Did Brock truly care for her? As much as Annie would like to think so, she was afraid to let her heart believe it.
Cocking her head, Bess sighed. “Brock’s a man, Annie. Men need to fix things. ’Specially good men like Brock and Obadiah. Brock sees you—all of us—gettin’ weaker every day. He feels powerless to fix it, and it’s drivin’ him mad.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “The sun’s set a couple times now on your anger. Seems to me you need to patch up your differences before …” A somber tone crept into her voice. “Well, before it’s too late.”
Annie sniffed and swiped at her wet cheek as remorse gripped her. Several times since their angry exchange, Brock had approached her, hat in hand, a penitent look shining from his gray-green eyes. But she’d made excuses not to talk with him. Somehow, she sensed he wouldn’t leave the fort without making his peace with her.
Tears welled in her eyes and slipped unheeded down her face. “I’m not angry at him, Bess. I’m scared for him. He was talking of leaving to go for help.” Her tears blurred Bess’s features. “He hasn’t given his heart to Christ, Bess. I can’t let him put his life in danger, and I don’t think he will go if he thinks I’m still angry with him.” Her voice hardened with her resolve. “Now that I have him here and know he’s safe, if keeping him angry with me will keep him alive until the Northwest Rangers come, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Bess gathered Annie against her like a mother hen gathers her chick beneath her wing. “Where is your faith, Annie?” she said softly, rocking Annie like she’d rocked baby Aquilla minutes earlier. “All our lives are in God’s hands. Remember the verse from Psalm thirty-four Obadiah read last night at vespers? ‘The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.’ The best thing you can do for Brock is to make your peace with him and put him in God’s hands. Just love him, and keep prayin’ for his salvation. It could even be that God will use this trial to nudge Brock into Christ’s fold.”
Suddenly Bess straightened and gently pushed Annie away. “I think you’re about to get your chance to do some mendin’.”
Annie raised her head from Bess’s shoulder, now damp with her tears. She looked through the open doorway, and her heart jumped. Katarina Hoffmeier was standing with Brock and Johann on the porch. Annie’s heart felt a sting when Katarina gave Brock a hug before continuing along the porch with Johann. The girl’s eyes had looked red as if she, too, had been weeping.
When Brock ducked into the room, Bess rose to her feet with a little groan. “Reckon I’d best see what my young’uns are about.” She headed for the door, giving Brock a bright smile as she passed him.
As he crossed to her, Annie shoved the cloth with the corn cake into her skirt pocket, scrambled to her feet, and hurriedly rubbed the remnants of wetness from her face.
Regret pulled his face long. Annie couldn’t decipher the several other emotions shining from his eyes, though.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you the other day.” His head hung, and his eyelids looked hooded as if weighted by remorse. He kept turning his squashed hat in his hands.
His words of contrition smote Annie with shame. As a Christian she had to forgive him and thus abandon
her notion of keeping him angry at her.
She reached out and touched his hand, still scrunching the brim of his hat. “Of course I forgive you. Will you forgive me for the mean things I said to you?” Her gaze slid away from his, down to their hands. “I didn’t mean them either. Besides Papa, you are the bravest man I’ve ever known. Will you forgive me?”
“You have my forgiveness … and more.” A grin eased up the corner of his mouth. “I doubt you have a mean bone in your body, Annie Martin. And you were probably closer to the truth than you knew.”
The constant buzz of conversation that always filled the garrison house during the day hushed to a low hum. Annie’s glance followed Brock’s around the room at the many pairs of interested eyes trained on them.
“Come.” He gently took her elbow and guided her toward the door. “I need to talk with you alone.”
He led her outside and down the long porch, past groups of people busying themselves in various occupations. Some women sat at their spinning wheels chatting with their children, who were carding wool at their feet. Men cleaned their guns, whittled, and talked together as well. But the thing Annie noticed about everyone she passed was the common look of fear and weary desperation on their drawn faces. Only children too young to fully understand their plight failed to display the anxious expression worn by their elders—a look that seemed to teeter on the edge of panic.
When they reached the large sugar maple tree a few yards behind the garrison house, they stopped. Several head of cattle grazing between them and the building afforded a measure of privacy.
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