by Susan Wiggs
In response to the white man's question, she said, "Perhaps I will boil salt to trade for shelter, until I can return to my people." The very thought of her tribe, so distant that they were like a dream, filled her with sadness.
He shook his head. "Salt doesn't bring much these days." His eyes moved over her slowly, igniting a coil of fear within her. "It appears you've gotten yourself wounded."
"What does it matter to you?" she asked hotly.
He pushed back his hat and scratched his head. "I don't guess I know, little squaw."
"Then leave us. You and your marauding brothers have already taken the lives of my family—"
He shook his head slowly. "Nope. I wasn't with them. I've no love for Indians, Shawnee in particular, but I'm not in the habit of riding down peaceful bands."
The silence drew out between them. Small Thunder shifted and trod upon her wounded leg. She ground her teeth against the pain, but a small sound escaped in spite of her.
"Let's go," the man said.
She stared, her heart thumping in her chest. She didn't move.
Impatience tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Come on, little squaw—"
"Do not call me that again!"
He shrugged. "Have you got a name?"
"Gimewane. In your tongue, Whispering Rain."
"Whispering Rain," he repeated. "Hell of a mouthful for a little thing like you."
"My Christian name is Mariah Parker. Given to me by my mother, who was adopted by my people many winters ago."
He nodded. "That explains the blue eyes." He indicated the boy. "Who's he?"
"Nen-nemki. Small Thunder. He is the son of my half-sister."
The man nodded again. "I'm Luke Adair." He hung the rifle about his shoulder, then stopped and picked up Small Thunder, who regarded him with large, solemn brown eyes.
Whispering Rain leaped up and tried to snatch the boy away. "Do not touch him, Luke Adair!"
He turned, ignoring her, and started down toward his horse. "Look, Mariah," he said impatiently over his shoulder, "we're three days from Lexington and you need a doctor. Every minute you stand there arguing with me is a minute lost. Now, you can either sit here and watch the boy freeze to death, or you can try to get some help before it's too late."
She said nothing. But the barely discernible sagging of her narrow shoulders indicated capitulation.
Chapter Twenty-One
Luke felt the coldness of the ground in his left foot where the leather sole of his boot had worn through, but he ignored the discomfort. He was near the end of his trek; in an hour or so he'd have the boot in Mansfield's shop for resoling.
He glanced back at Mariah Parker, who straddled his dun mare, holding the boy in front of her. For three days they'd traveled together, yet he still knew virtually nothing about his reluctant charge. From time to time she would respond to his questions in her curiously precise English; he'd learned that she was seventeen, as nearly as she could tell, the daughter of a Kispokotha Shawnee and a white woman. Her camp had been set upon by frontier bandits, and she'd killed one of them, incurring the wrath of his sons. Beyond that, Mariah Parker told him little; she was hardly a widow's barrel for talk.
Luke found himself watching her frequently, curious and slightly resentful of the fact that he'd made himself responsible for her. She was a small slip of a girl, with fine-boned, regular features and eyes so huge and blue that it hurt to look at them. Luke's deeply ingrained dislike of redskins prevented him from admitting that she was actually quite beautiful.
When they reached the head of the town branch of the Elkhorn, the child called Small Thunder said something in a small, fearful voice.
"Please stop," Mariah said to Luke. At that moment his left foot found a particularly succulent puddle. Gritting his teeth in impatience, he halted the mare.
Mariah drew the child to her breast, and he spoke again, this time with large tears escaping from his eyes. Mariah made a soft, crooning sound of sympathy and hugged him reassuringly. Then she drew one of the leather whangs from her braid and deftly knotted it, instructing Small Thunder to pull upon the end. He pulled, and the knot disappeared as if by magic. Before the tears had dried on his cheeks, he was grinning and begging for more.
Mariah's face was expressionless when she turned to Luke. "He fears the white man's village," she told him simply. "You may go on now."
An unexpected and unwelcome prickle of guilt crept up on Luke as he started toward town. The tenderness Mariah had shown the boy in that brief moment suddenly transformed her in his eyes. She was as human as he. A person who had suffered, a person who now grieved. She'd given him a glimpse of her inner being, and Luke found he could no longer deny how beautiful she was, how fine, how brave.
Still, she came from a race that he hated. Her father had doubtless been among the murderous bands who spread terror throughout the frontier, slaughtering whole families, slashing babies as they lay in their cradles. Luke wondered if he would always have such thoughts when he looked at Mariah.
The trace they were following broadened abruptly into a road. Luke pointed up ahead.
"Lexington," he told her.
Mariah tightened her grip around Small Thunder.
Couched between two undulating hills, the town was a sprawling array of log and clapboard buildings interspersed with a few structures of brick and stone. A main square was alive with the temporary stands of itinerant merchants. Unlike the woodsmen and settlers Mariah had seen, the people here were more grandly dressed, the men in tailored frock coats, the women carrying parasols and wearing sweeping skirts, many of them attended by black slaves.
Luke lashed the horse's reins to a rail in front of a white house bordered by a wooden walkway. Overhead, a painted wooden sign swung in the sharp breeze, bearing a symbol of some sort. He took Small Thunder down and held the boy while Mariah dismounted. She kept her eyes downcast, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the town.
"This is Dr. Elisha Warfield's," Luke said. "Hell see to your leg."
Mariah hesitated outside the office, giving him a dubious look.
"He's a healer, Mariah, like a Shawnee medicine man, I guess," Luke explained. "He's a lot better than those calomel doctors some folks swear by." She drew back distrustfully.
Luke set his jaw. The girl's silent vulnerability stirred something inside him that he couldn't name. He didn't like it, didn't like feeling responsible for the woman and boy. It was easier to hate redskins when they were a mass of faceless, marauding savages in the wilderness, not a beautiful woman who bore the look of a thousand hurts in her eyes.
He stepped into the office and drew Mariah in behind him. Her wrist felt fragile, birdlike. Luke ground his teeth together. Everything about her was fragile, from the soft straight line of her brow to her tiny, moccasin-clad feet.
Luke recognized the two women who waited within. He nodded at Myra Trotter, who ran a dry-goods store with her husband. She was constantly complaining of vapors and ague and paid regular visits to the doctor. Her eyes widened at the sight of Luke's companions. She threw Mariah a look of contempt and drew her well-jowled face into the curved bill of her bonnet.
The other woman in the waiting room was Nell Wingfield. Luke felt, as always, a stab of regret when he saw her, and resentment, too. When his family had arrived in Lexington in 1796, they'd met Nell again and learned that Black Bear had released her. It seemed the brave had taken a dislike to her; she claimed that her constant complaining served her well.
All those years ago, Nell had ground out the last inkling of hope the Adairs had of finding Rebecca again. When Nell had left Black Bear, Rebecca had been dying of smallpox, her body covered by running pustules, fever burning her life away. Nell had assured the Adairs, not unkindly, that Becky couldn't have survived the illness. A good thing, probably. Even such a painful death was preferable to living with her Indian captor.
Nell had forged a new life for herself in Lexington, much to the dismay of people like Mrs. Trotter. Mis
s Nellie's Liquor Vault and House of Entertainment, she called her establishment. The neat whitewashed house at the lower end of Water Street was popular among more men than would admit to it.
Nell had the self-possession and overblown looks of a woman who used to be pretty, and still thought she was. The object of a good bit of disapproval herself, she didn't raise an eyebrow at Mariah and the boy. She merely blinked and shifted in her creaky caned chair.
Alvis Mann, the doctor's assistant, entered through a door in the rear. He and Luke exchanged a few words, quietly. Alvis shuffled his feet and made a sound of protest. Luke replied curtly. Mariah heard a clink of coins, and then Luke turned back to her.
"I'll wait outside," he said, and disappeared.
Mariah looked after him, her hands tightening to small fists at her sides. Luke Adair thought nothing of leaving her alone in this strange place, with the fat woman glowering beneath her bonnet, the other staring unabashedly and smoothing the folds of her pink dress. Mariah wanted to leave, to run and hide, but Luke had already paid for the care she would reluctantly receive.
"What's your name, girl?" asked the pink-gowned lady suddenly.
"Gime—Mariah Parker."
"You're a friend of Luke's?"
Mariah shook her head. There was nothing between her and the white man that even resembled friendship.
"What about the boy—what's his name?"
Mariah thought quickly. Nen-nemki was a proud name, one revered by the Shawnee. But they weren't among the Shawnee anymore. Small Thunder would have to go by a Christian name.
"Gideon," she said suddenly, remembering the name of an ancient hero her mother had once told her about. "Gideon Parker," she added, giving him her mother's name as well.
The woman rose and approached her. Mariah caught a waft of heavy perfume and a certain musty odor from the woman's breath.
"I'm Nell Wingfield," she said, imbuing her name with importance. She slid her eyes over Mariah.
"What's ailing you?"
Mariah quickly explained about her injury and also mentioned that she wanted the inoculation against the smallpox for Gideon.
Mrs. Trotter harrumphed sharply. Nell whirled on her. "And what's ailing you?" she snapped.
"You'd best stay away from those Injuns," the other lady cautioned. "They're probably crawling with vermin."
"Why, Mrs. Trotter, I've heard you say the same thing about me and my girls," Nell said with false sweetness. She turned her attention back to Mariah, grinning at Mrs. Trotter's gasp of outrage.
The doctor's assistant appeared and motioned for Mariah to follow him. When she balked in sudden fear, Nell took her by the arm.
"He's a good doctor," she said, elbowing her way into a small, well-lit surgery. She paused to clasp hands with a younger woman in the doorway who had a fresh bandage above her eye. "Wait outside, Doreen," she said, and drew Mariah up beside her.
Elisha Warfield looked more like a backwoodsman than a doctor, in a linsey-woolsey shirt and well-worn buckskin trousers. But his rough-looking hands were gentle, his voice soothing as he removed the strip of cloth that bound Mariah's leg. The wound was healing poorly, the flesh at its edges grayish and growing putrid.
"This'll hurt," Dr. Warfield told her simply, unstopping a green bottle.
Mariah nodded. "I know."
The pain of the clear liquid seared her to the bone. She gripped the edge of the chair she was sitting in, set her teeth together, and allowed no sound to escape her. The doctor eyed her with frank admiration as he finished cleaning and trimming the gash and bound it with white strips of a porous fabric.
Gideon was equally stoic when Dr. Warfield expertly broke the skin of the boy's shoulder and rubbed a thread treated with dried kine pox over the wound. Mariah stood, swaying slightly with sudden weakness and relief. Her mother's wish for protection from the disease had been fulfilled—at a cost so dear that it made Mariah tremble.
Looking slightly ashen, for the operation on Mariah's leg had been an appalling sight, Nell Wingfield propelled Mariah from the surgery. "Do you have a place to stay?" she asked.
Mariah considered for a moment. True, Luke Adair had brought her here, but he'd said nothing about sheltering her and Gideon. She shook her head.
"Well, you do now, I reckon." Nell linked her arm through Mariah's. "I had a darkie, name of Rosalie, who used to work around my place. Cleaning, doing laundry and such. But she ran off a week ago, probably up to Louisville to find her way to New Orleans. Fool girl, she had a good roof over her head and three meals a day. I can give you the same, Mariah, and twelve bits a week if you'll take Rosalie's place."
Much of what Nell said was incomprehensible, but Mariah caught the gist of it. She hesitated, turning the idea over in her mind. Nell Wingfield offered a slave's work. Whispering Rain, who had once run free and played in tumbling rivers and sung to the trees and stars, would be trapped into an existence where her life would be ordered by other people. White people.
Alone, she might have a choice. She might be able to find her way back to her people. But she had Gideon, the son of her half sister, to think about. The risk of such a journey was too great. She lifted her eyes to Nell.
"I will come," she stated at last.
"Good. I'm sure you'll do just fine. Of course, I'll give you time to let that leg mend."
They left the office with Doreen, stepping out into blinding noonday sunlight. Luke, who had been lounging against the rail, swung around.
"I'm taking her in," Nell explained.
His brow darkened, and he raked a hand through his hair. He was seized—not for the first time—by a sudden, fierce protective instinct. The mere thought of this fragile girl being mauled by Nell's unsavory patrons made his in lurch.
"Look, Nell," he said, "I don't think—"
She waved her hand impatiently. "Now, don't go getting your dander up. She's just going to do the chores around my place in exchange for room and board."
Luke glanced over at Mariah. "Will you be all right?"
She gazed at him, unsmiling. Nothing would ever be all right again. Everything she'd ever known had been taken from her. But there was no point in bringing up a matter that Luke Adair didn't understand and didn't seem to care about. She merely nodded.
He helped her and the others into Nell's cart, pausing a moment to brush his finger over the boy's cheek in a gesture that surprised Mariah. Then he turned back to his horse.
She knew that broad, strong-looking back from days of watching him from between the dun's bobbing ears. Somehow the sight gave her strength.
As Nell took up the reins, Mariah cleared her throat.
"Luke Adair."
He turned back, eyebrows raised at the throbbing softness of her voice.
She forced the barest hint of a smile. "Thank you."
Just for a moment a grin of genuine friendliness lit his face. Then he mounted, and was gone.
A chunk of mud slid down the river bank and plopped into the swirling dark waters of the Ohio.
"Damn," Hance swore, gripping a tree limb to keep himself from slipping.
"Keep it quiet, Adair," whispered Wiley Harper. "We don't want the trappers to know we're here too soon."
A cloud that had obscured the moon scudded away, and a shaft of pale, ghostly light slid over Hance's companions. Wiley and Micajah Harper, acquaintances from his Virginia childhood, were alike in sheer ugliness. They both had the same jutting jaw and protruding brow, beady eyes and thick lips. Spiky hair was given no more attention than their yellowed teeth. Their fingernails had been hardened by wax so that they might be used as weapons in one of their favorite pastimes, gouge fighting. Micajah had a shriveled knot of flesh where his ear had been cut away in retribution for horse stealing. His brother's eyes were scarred by the gouging matches they indulged in. The Harpers represented the lowest-living element of the frontier.
But at this point in Hance's life, they suited him. He was cleaner and better spoken, but was like the
Harpers in some ways. He was a man of few scruples, possessing a lust for adventure and a vengeful hatred of Indians. There was as little to admire about Hance as there was about his companions. He stared up at the dripping trees above the Falls of the Ohio and thought about his family.
He'd tried, God, he'd tried to live the life they wanted for him on the farm they'd carved out of the rippling Bluegrass Region, just south of Lexington. But there was nothing about that back-breaking existence that called to Hance.
Lately, he'd begun to suspect that what he wanted would always be out of his reach. He wanted goodness, honor, pride… yet those things had never been part of his nature. Instead, he was hot-blooded, self-willed, shrewdly ambitious.
"Get on out there, Adair," Micajah Harper urged, interrupting his contemplation. "You've got to get clear of the bank so you'll be ready when the barge gets here."
Hance crawled out onto a stout limb, watching the dark waters slip by beneath him. It occurred to him that the Harpers were using him, giving him a dangerous role in their scheme to pirate six thousand dollars' worth of prime pelts. But Hance didn't care. He'd been ready for a change when the brothers had taken up with him. He'd followed them up to Louisville, as much for the adventure as for the promise of fabulous sums of money. Money was always a lure for Hance. Not that he was all that fond of the trappings of wealth, but somehow earning it gave him a better sense of his own worth.
Hance pushed aside a sudden, unwelcome image of his parents. He'd managed to stay out of trouble for a good while, consumed by guilt over his part in compelling them to leave Virginia. They'd insisted, of course, that they'd been ready for such a move. But the fact remained that they'd still be living comfortably in Dancer's Meadow if he hadn't killed Artis Judd.
He was smarter now, he told himself. He joined the Harpers with eyes wide open, appreciating—and accepting—the risks of their plan. And the risks weren't that great. The raft they'd spotted earlier in the day was manned by only two Indian trappers, too greedy for firewater to want to split their earnings with guards.