by Susan Wiggs
Roarke gritted his teeth in frustration. "Gennie, listen to me—"
"No!" The sharpness of her tone startled even her. Softening a little, she said, "Don't, Roarke. Don't spoil a lovely Christmas by starting an argument."
"I didn't intend to argue, Gennie."
"But I would have," she assured him.
Stifling an impulse to sweep her into his arms, Roarke stepped back, gritting his teeth. She wasn't ready.
"Very well," he said. "Why don't you try out your new spectacles?"
She sent him a grateful look and turned her eyes to the paper she was holding. The words were so sharp and clear that they seemed to leap from the page. Sitting down, she began to read aloud from an essay by the patriot firebrand Thomas Paine.
Genevieve's voice wavered over his powerful denunciation of the deserters and the Continental soldiers who intended to flee homeward the moment their commissions were up. " 'The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country,' " Paine scathingly wrote. " 'But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman…' "
She stopped reading for a moment. The writing was powerful, compelling. It made her think too much, moved her to feel things she didn't want to feel. Glancing up, she saw a similar effect etched on Roarke's features. He seemed to have forgotten the matter he'd brought up moments ago, his attention held fast by Paine's words.
"Go on," he ordered gruffly.
His intensity scared her. So far no one she'd been close to had been touched by the civil war. But the way Roarke was looking—
"Keep reading," he said.
She forced her eyes back to the page and went on, wishing she'd never picked up the paper. Paine called all men of heart to arms, to defend the land that had given them so much.
Genevieve finished reading and set the paper aside. Slowly, she looked up at Roarke. Then, dropping her eyes to the big, calloused hand at his side, she saw evidence of the hard conviction she'd been dreading for months: the quiet clenching of a fist.
"You're a fool, Roarke Adair." Genevieve paced in front of the small contingent of men assembled at the head of the main street of Dancer's Meadow. In the blinding brightness of the January sun, they were slapping one another on the back and talking of the high adventure that awaited them at the frontier.
Genevieve didn't share their exuberance. That manly heartiness would soon disappear once they tasted the hardship of the trail, the bite of an Indian's tomahawk. Since the arrival of Sergeant Alfred Lasher a week earlier, a shadow had dropped over her life. Lasher had been riding the counties of the back country, seeking men to defend the Western wilderness areas against Indians who had lately been armed by and allied to the British.
"You're wrong, Gennie," Roarke said, securing a pack to his roan stallion. "I was a fool when I ignored the calls to arms. I was willing to work the land but not to fight for it. I'm late to admit my obligation, but I'm willing now."
"Willing to die, Roarke?"
"Aye."
"What about Hance?"
Roarke glanced over at the handsome towheaded lad gamboling on the town green with Mimi, enjoying the sunshine.
"My son will grow up free. A Virginian—an American. Not a British subject."
"And your farm?"
"Gennie, the land's so rich the corn practically grows wild. Cyrus Hinton and his boys will take care of things while I'm gone."
"Just where are you going?" she asked fiercely.
He shaded his eyes and turned westward, toward the blue wall of the mountains, which concealed a heartless, forbidding wilderness. "We're to rendezvous with Captain Clark in Kentucky. I guess I'm going to war." He sounded a little incredulous at the idea. Shrugging, he angled a rifle-barreled gun across his saddle. When he swung back around, the look on his face nearly crumbled the wall of indifference she'd erected around herself.
"Is it really Hance and the farm you're worried about, Gennie?" he asked softly.
She bit her lip. Deep down she had an urge to fling herself into his arms and ask, What about me, Roarke? There are no tidy arrangements that can be made for me. Not when I've grown to depend on you so, to need you. Like the soil needs the rain and the warmth of the springtime sun…
But she caught herself. It was preposterous even to consider that a plea from her would deter Roarke from—
"Gennie?" He was waiting for an answer.
She blushed, realizing she'd been staring. "Of course I'm only worried about Hance and the farm. What else could there possibly be?" As soon as the words, sounding so flippant, so indifferent, were out of her mouth, she regretted them. A look of pain crossed his face. Yet Genevieve couldn't bring herself to retract what she'd said.
Roarke was asking for an admission on her part that he meant something to her. But she couldn't say that now, not when he was going so far away with these rough-looking frontiersmen, most of them shockingly scarred by Indian righting…
"Why Captain Clark?" she asked suddenly, desperate to turn the subject. "Can't you join a local regiment?"
"I don't much care for authority, for mindless obedience," he explained. "If I'm to follow a man into battle, it has to be someone I respect. Someone who embodies all the traits he expects to find in his men. George Rogers Clark appears, by all reports, to be that sort of man."
"I see." Then, remembering something, she handed him a bag of coins. "Mr. Firth sold my crop. This is the rest of the money I owe you."
Roarke grinned. "I won't have much use for that where I'm going. Keep it for when I get back."
"What if you don't come back?"
He grinned even more broadly. "Then keep it in trust for Hance."
Genevieve felt a flicker of anger. "How can you be so casual about this?" she hissed, striking his chest lightly with her fist for emphasis.
He captured her hand with his and held it against his heart, his mood changing abruptly from joviality to intense seriousness. His eyes drilled into hers as he spoke.
"Feel it beating?" he demanded hotly. "Faster than a treed squirrel, Gennie. If it sounds like I'm joking, it's because if I don't, I might just burst with panic." Seeing her lips tremble, he let a low groan escaped him. "Oh, God, I don't want to leave you, Gennie," he said.
Then, in full view of the entire assemblage in the center of town, he kissed her, long and hard, putting the full force of his frustrated longing into the embrace.
It never occurred to Genevieve to stop him, to be embarrassed at being handled so in front of the crowd. She drank the memory of his smile from his lips, and when he lifted his face from hers, her cheeks were drenched with tears.
"Goodbye, Gennie," Roarke said, his eyes devouring her.
Unable to speak, she nodded and backed away. Their hands lingered together for a moment, then dropped. Finally, Genevieve found her voice.
"Roarke," she said brokenly, trying to smile, "I hope you win your war."
Chapter Nine
Ahead of Roarke, Jim Ray was slashing frantically at his leggings with a hunting knife so they wouldn't hamper his escape. Behind him, Jim's brother Bill's screams tore through the misty forest, praying to a God that didn't listen, begging for mercy that was not granted by the Shawnee war party.
Above the vicious yipping of the Indians, Roarke heard a dreadful, ragged breathing and realized it was his own. The harshness of it startled him.
It was the sound of fear, as raw and pure and elemental as the Kentucky woods.
The Indians had been chasing Roarke and his companions for almost a league, having discovered the Virginians collecting sap for maple sugar in a glade outside the fort at Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
"Roarke Adair, ye tenderfoot," Jim Ray had yelled. "Get that pistol primed!"
Roarke had almost laughed, thinking Jim was making a joke. But then he'd looked up to count at least a dozen faces, fiercely painted red and black. He and the others had lit out toward the fort.
The fort… Roarke saw its palisades beyond the clearing ahea
d of him, and his legs pumped ever harder, defying muscles that screamed with fatigue. But the fort might as well have been a thousand leagues away. For it was being peppered from every quarter with musket shot from Black-fish's braves.
Roarke had lost sight of Jim Ray. He risked a glance behind and saw that the tall yellow feather chasing him was gaining ground. The brave, accompanied by a slim youth, gave a murderous scream and raised his tomahawk high. Roarke plunged on, topping a slight rise. A fallen tree, its girth nearly half of Roarke's height, lay ahead.
He dove behind it, shielding himself with underbrush. The yellow feather and the youth passed him. Roarke's hands shook as he primed his pistol, but it was ready by the time the braves returned to search for him.
Despite the drizzling cold, Roarke felt beads of sweat break out on his brow. A moccasin-clad foot landed not three feet in front of his face. He was so close to dying he could taste it. Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing out here in this wilderness, killing when he had to and being hunted like an animal every time he set foot outside the fort. At times like this it was easy to forget the lofty goals of freedom and independence. Easier still to long for the comfort of his own hearth and home, for Hance's merry laughter, for a glimpse of Gennie's face…
The Shawnee brave let loose with a howl of triumph when he spotted Roarke. But he hadn't seen the pistol. The howl became a macabre gurgle as the pistol exploded and gore blossomed from his chest. Roarke felt a momentary surge of power as he rose from his hiding place, taking a dark, forbidden pleasure in having bested the enemy.
But the feeling was driven away as he heard a sound of horrible grief.
"Notha," the Indian boy screamed. "Notha, Notha…"
Roarke recognized the word: "my father." A shiver rippled through him. He could only wonder what it was like for the boy to see his father die this way.
The youth stopped abruptly and looked over at Roarke, who had just finished reloading his pistol. Although only a child of perhaps twelve, his eyes smoldered with a hatred so fierce that Roarke grew cold. It seemed a sin against nature for a child to look that way.
"Roarke Adair," the boy shouted to the wind, mimicking the name he'd heard Jim Ray use earlier in the maple glade. Then he darted off into the forest, saying the name over and over again like a strange chant, as if to burn it upon his memory. Roarke didn't understand the rest of the babbling, yet he'd never heard a vow of revenge spoken more clearly. He knew he should dispatch the youth with his pistol. But nothing could have compelled him to do it, to take that young life as he'd taken the father's.
There was a wintry lull before spring burst upon Kentucky. The men within the compound at Harrodsburg protested the cold as they were sent out to cut pickets to repair the stockade, which joined the outer walls of numerous cabins. Others were busy prying Indian musket balls from the palisades. Lead was precious to the small company of men in the fort.
Roarke's friend Will Coomes grumbled at the chore. Flipping a bullet out with the tip of his knife, he said, "More fodder for you, Beelzebub. Maybe this'll be the one you put into Blackfish's stinkin' hide."
Roarke grinned. A seasoned woodsman, Coomes had the quirky habit of talking to his rifle.
"I don't mind the work, Will," Roarke said. "Life in this fort is dull as death."
Coomes raised a skeptical eyebrow. "The hell you say, Roarke."
"Well, 'tis dull so long as no one's trying to break into the fort and scalp you."
Coomes nodded at that. Conditions at Harrodsburg were abominable. The filth of mud and animal dung and human waste created an unholy stench. The men—rough frontier sorts who lived by a code of violence—were weary and irritable and given to picking fights.
It was a shame, Roarke reflected, that the Kentucky wilderness was such a treacherous place. It should be a land where things grew and thrived, not where men killed and died. There was something profound about the pristine forests, with their rich, earthy smells and the babble of springs pouring forth from every crevice of rock, that made the violence seem an ungodly affront against nature.
Roarke thought of home, and Hance. And Gennie. Always Gennie. It was absurd that he should feel she was such a part of him, when she'd never given him so much as an inkling of encouragement.
"Ye look like you're longin' for home," Coomes suggested.
Roarke nodded. "Aye. But it's getting hard to remember I ever had a home. My own son wouldn't know me from Adam."
"Doubtless your wife's keepin' your memory alive."
"My wife died birthing him."
Coomes made a clucking sound of sympathy. "At least you've only the boy to miss. Me, I've got the prettiest gal in Pennsylvania waitin' for me."
Roarke had a sudden vision of Genevieve and remembered the taste of her lips when he'd kissed her goodbye. "I know all about missing a pretty woman," he said gravely.
They worked in companionable melancholy as mist gathered on the brims of their hats and dripped in front of their faces. Roarke moved down the wall a little, seeking more musket balls. He spied a rain-soaked bit of paper and picked it up.
"What's that?" Coomes asked.
Roarke's brow darkened. "A Shawnee's calling card. The English have them leaving us broadsheets from Detroit. Seems they think they can persuade us to give up with a lot of flowery promises."
Coomes snorted, and Roarke crumpled the broadsheet, casting it aside. But there was one thing he couldn't argue with. The situation in Kentucky was desperate.
Harrodsburg and Boonesboro were the last remaining American strongholds. And they weren't so damned strong after all. Harrodsburg huddled tenaciously beside the river, its cabins brimming with women and children and the sick and wounded. A few fires in the compound had been spattered out by a persistent stinging rain that soaked the canvas of the men's tents and caused the horses to hang their heads against the dreary chill. Roarke dug his knife into the wall and tried not to think about the past week.
It was inhumanly cold. Cold enough to debilitate a man. But not a Shawnee. Roarke clenched his fist until his fingers bit into his palm. He'd been fighting Indians for weeks, and he still wasn't used to the savagery.
The Shawnee, armed with new British-issued weapons, disdained the appalling weather. They'd withdrawn, yes, but everyone in the fort knew they'd be back.
The actual battle was never the worst of it, Roarke reflected. It was always the aftermath, the pain of the wounds and the horror of loss, that was the hardest to endure. The satisfaction of having survived was always a momentary thing. The cold, empty feeling of having drawn blood and killed stayed with a man, haunting his sleep.
Roarke shivered. The Indians didn't merely kill; they butchered. They crushed skulls and peeled away hair and flesh; they severed limbs and gutted bodies. With each new clash, Roarke learned a new horror.
Americans fought as if they were up against a herd of charging buffalo. Powder was dumped, unmeasured, into the muzzle. A mouthful of balls was spat down the barrel, the touchhole pricked, the weapon primed heavily and then fired away. No time was spared for patching; the scattering bullets usually found Indian flesh, for the Shawnee fought in a close-packed ring.
Some of the Kentucky frontiersmen heeded the lessons of the Indian wars too well. They believed that the way to defend the frontier was to kill Indians until they'd killed them all. They were merciless with the enemy, with the enemy's women and children.
Roarke glanced over at Bard Tinsley, who was idly whit-tling toothpicks a few yards away. One of the man's ears had been chewed away by a redskin, but the scars on his character were deeper even than that on his flesh. The man had a seemingly insatiable appetite for blood and women. He wore the scalps he'd lifted with pride, adorning himself shamelessly with the hair of dozens of victims.
Roarke grimaced and looked away from Tinsley. On days like this he was hard put to remember what the hell he was doing out here, sleeping in the rain and eating raw game and killing Indians…
&n
bsp; "Lookee there," Coomes said suddenly, pointing at the clearing. " 'Tis Lawton Powell." The scout had been sent out from the command post to discern Chief Blackfish's next move.
"Who's that other rider?" Coomes wondered. "Jesus, a darky! We don't see many of 'em out here."
The man with Powell was wiry, clad in buckskins and a wide-brimmed Kentucky hat. When he tipped the hat back to reveal his face, Roarke ran down to the clearing.
"Calvin Greenleaf!" he shouted, clapping the young man on the back when he dismounted.
Calvin still retained an intense, brooding look, but he seemed pleased to see Roarke.
"Hello, Mr. Adair."
"That's Sergeant Adair, boy," Lawton Powell said quickly. "Show some respect."
Roarke gave Powell, who disliked Negroes almost as much as he hated Indians, a withering glance. "We don't wear uniforms out here, and we don't stand on rank."
He walked toward the stockade with Calvin, showing him the bag of shot he'd pried from the walls. Coomes still worked there, singing to Beelzebub.
"How are they?" Calvin asked suddenly, his voice betraying his hunger for news of the family.
"Your family was well when I left. All healthy. Proud of what they're doing. Missing you."
Calvin nodded. Then, with a studied casualness that made Roarke wonder, he asked, "Miz Culpeper?"
Roarke was stabbed again by the memory of Genevieve.
God, but he missed her. "Same as always," he told Calvin. "Proud, feisty, determined as hell. Now, what about you?"
"I like it out here," he said, although he grinned with irony and wiped a drop of frigid rain from the tip of his nose. "I've been clear to the Mississippi."
Roarke gave a low whistle. "So it's true, then. Major Clark's going straight for General Hamilton's throat."
It was an awesome thought, turning the whole of the western wilderness into a giant theater of war. But Roarke didn't have time to ponder the matter with Calvin.
He realized suddenly that Coomes had stopped singing. He pocketed his bag of shot. Somewhere in the woods a wild turkey gobbled.