by Beth Trissel
“That wasn’t a real race.”
“Let her ride tomorrow if she wants,” Jack said.
Joseph shook his head. “No women allowed. This race is for men only.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “Afraid of a challenge?”
“The lass might get hurt,” Grandpa argued.
“Might win,” Karin shot back.
A smile curved Jack’s lips. This time he flicked her an undeniable wink—cheeky rascal. “Peki’s rested. Ride back with me, Karin.”
Before she could accept or refuse his cocky request, Joseph curled his lip like an affronted dog. If he’d had fur it would have stood on end. “She rides with me.”
Grandpa waved Joseph aside. “Let her go, lad. No harm will come of it with us at hand.”
“The hell it won’t!” Joseph seized Jack’s wrist to try and jerk him back. “Get away!”
Jack whipped around and thrust Joseph against the wall with one arm twisted up behind his back. “Care to try that again?” he invited in a low growl.
Chapter Eight
A brooding darkness hovered over the McNeal homestead. Of that, Neeley was certain. And she sensed from where it came. She needed all her wisdom now to prevail against it.
She’d limped stiffly through the home sprinkling a sweet aromatic decoction of angelica root into every corner, the most powerful herb for warding off spells and enchantment. Then she’d hung a bough of rowan wood above the doorway to lend protection from evil. The leafless branch dripped with clusters of orange-red berries, pleasant to behold as she sat by the hearth.
Neeley possessed an uncanny sight into the future, though not the clear prophecy that gifted some, and she had a strong link with the past. As if borne on the mists of time, her thoughts swirled back to that fateful eve when Mary McNeal passed from this world. She saw it all again as if it were only yesterday, the desperate ride to McNeal Hollow, jolting along in the wagon hugging her hooded cloak against the blustery cold. Sharp wind with the bite of winter in its teeth scattered the fading red and yellow leaves drifting on the ground. The damp chill whipped the last foliage from trees muted in gray drizzle.
As midwife to the clannish Scots settled in these ridges, Neeley knew Mary’s time drew near, but hadn’t expected the urgent summons from her nephew John McNeal so soon. His youngest son, Thomas, hunched on the seat beside her, sped the bay horse over the rutted track as fast as he dared. Worry for his laboring sister dulled the youth’s usual sparkle. Neeley hoped the premature infant would be strong enough to survive. The poor mite already had one blot against it.
As for its young mother recently recovered along with other Shawnee captives after Colonel Bouquet’s treaty, Neeley shook her head. Forced home against her will, Mary seemed to have no spirit left, like the flame snuffed out of a candle.
Neeley well recalled her arrival at the old cabin, squelching through mucky leaves in the yard and climbing up the steps to the stoop. Despair lined John’s grim face, his eyes as bleak as the day. His formidable presence filled the open doorway like the chieftain of a Scottish clan, and so he was in his way. He commanded enormous respect in this tight-knit enclave of hardy Scots-Irish forging a new life in these mountains.
Steeling herself for the worst, Neeley hurried past the fire crackling in the stone hearth to the figure tossing on the bed, the woven coverlet thrashed into a crumpled pile of blue and brown cloth at her feet.
How thin Mary looked except for her swollen belly. She’d eaten next to nothing these past weeks and sat by the fire lost in some inner world. Now she writhed, face flushed, blue eyes wild, her father’s eyes, McNeal eyes. Auburn hair spread about her in a red tide.
Neeley bent over the young woman and laid a hand on her glistening forehead. Mary’s skin burned beneath her palm. Fever would soon drain what little fight remained in her. “Mary?”
At first, the girl looked around as if she didn’t know her, and then recognition came into her pain- glazed stare. “Aunt Neeley—thank God. Take care of my little one.”
“Now, Mary. I’ll see you through this,” Neeley soothed, with far more reassurance than she truly possessed.
Mary shook her once beautiful face, now lined with suffering. “You take the babe. I’ll not live out the day. Promise me,” she gasped.
What choice did Neeley have? “I promise.”
The girl was so weak. Neeley lifted her stained shift and nudged her legs apart for a better look. At that moment, a fierce contraction gripped Mary and a conical shape smeared in blood swelled between her thighs. “Gracious! The head’s crowning. Push, lass.”
A panting cry escaped Mary and she dug her fingers into her palms, straining with a will to see this baby into the world before she departed for the next.
“Again,” Neeley urged, until the tiny body slid into her ready hands. Minute arms and legs flailed and the baby’s lusty wails filled the cabin. “A fine wee lass.”
A faint smile curved Mary’s pale lips as she closed her eyes and sank down onto the sheet.
Relief at the infant’s wellbeing rose alongside dismay as Neeley tied the cord and cut it with the sharp knife John had ready. She dried the little girl with soft linen. Wrapping the infant in clean cloth, she tucked the baby beside her fading mother.
Mary stirred. “Call her Karin after Mama. Tell her I love her. Shequenor loves her. Tell her I loved him…” her whisper faded.
Neeley regarded the pair through swimming eyes, the newborn wriggling with life while her mother’s ebbed away. Mary looked peaceful now as if only sleeping, but Neeley had looked upon the many faces of death and knew better.
God forgive her, Neeley hadn’t honored the dying woman’s request. At John’s fierce insistence, she’d kept her silence...well, mostly. The odd bit had slipped out to Karin now and then, her name the one thing they’d given her as her mother asked.
Before Neeley took this secret to her grave, she determined the lass should hear all she knew of the beautiful Mary McNeal and her ill-fated love. The timing must be right, though, or Neeley would only wreak more heartbreak. John would never forgive her, and her last days on this earth would be blighted with bitterness.
Then along came Jack McCray, crucial to all Neeley sensed had already begun to unfold. For him, she’d undertaken something special. Unlike Sarah’s fretful pacing over Karin and her menfolk, Neeley sat by the hearth and sewed a shirt styled after the one they’d cut from Jack. The hunting shirt overlapped in the front, to be held together with his woven belt or his father’s, whichever he preferred.
She smoothed the wool cloth she’d saved without fully knowing the reason why. Almost finished now.
Her needle winking in the firelight, she sewed the blue fringe on the cape collar and around the long hem. The fragrance of angelica, the most sacred of herbs, rose from the linen. She’d sprinkled a decoction of the holy root over the cloth to bring protection to the wearer. Jack would need all the defense he could get.
As for Karin, her innate goodness would aid her, but Neeley wasn’t taking any chances. An herbal bath of angelica mingled with the purifying power of agrimony, redolent of ripe apricots, awaited the girl. Jack too, if Neeley managed to coax him in.
****
Frigid water splashed up Jack’s legs to his thighs. “Hold on!”
He fought to keep Peki’s head and shoulders above the swift current and Karin in his grasp. Much to her credit, she only gasped and didn’t screech at their sudden lurch into liquid ice.
“I’ve got you,” he said, cursing Mister McNeal under his breath. Considering the man’s anxiety over his granddaughter’s safety, he might’ve given more thought to this watery assault.
Certainly, Jack had tackled worse crossings during the war and been fortunate to survive. Riders, horses, even entire wagons had been swept downstream, but that was to escape an advancing army, or in stealthy pursuit of the enemy. Here, they’d abandoned perfectly good shelter to venture out into this churning creek.
A jagged tree
limb tumbled past and nearly smacked into Peki. If the horse were injured, Jack could forget the race. Worse. The stallion wouldn’t carry them back to the homestead or anywhere else.
“Like hell this is fordable!” Jack shouted at the figures struggling ahead of him.
“Wasn’t so bad before!” Mister McNeal yelled over his shoulder. He lunged his big gelding across the foaming deluge roiling with debris. “Karin all right?”
Icy swill spewed up into their faces. “Fine time to ask!” Not that Jack minded for himself, but it defied his instinct to shield her. Mister McNeal really must have hated the thought of a single night spent at the old cabin to undertake this insanity.
Joseph plunged behind his stepfather on his leggy mare. Even fighting to cross this torrent, little brother’s rigid demeanor bespoke his annoyance with Jack. Karin was vexed too, and no doubt terribly confused. Likely she’d accepted a ride with him partly because Joseph had behaved like a complete ass. Nor did she care to endure her grandfather’s disapproval. More than that had influenced her decision, though.
Despite her shock over his disclosures, Jack knew how drawn she was to him. Likely that also goaded her, succumbing to the wiles of a man who’d fought with Queen’s Dragoons and worse, alongside Indians at an infamous battle. The war might be over, but acrimony still ran as high as this muddy stream.
Another violent lurch jolted them. Peki scrambled, stumbling, up the rain-slicked bank. He found his footing in the browned fern and lunged back onto the sodden path.
Evening shadows ran the length of the hazy trees on either side of them as Jack trotted Peki behind the two dimly lit horses and riders jogging ahead. Saturated leaves underfoot muffled their passage. Crows’ nests and the mass of twigs and leaves built by squirrels stood out in blackened shapes among the barren branches. Only hemlocks and other evergreens retained their color after all that wind.
A hazy dusk fell and Karin trembled in the raw air. The poor girl dripped from her waist to her toes. Jack was hardened to most misery, but doubted any female as petted as Karin ever strayed far from the hearth.
“I’ll get you home as fast as I can,” he promised.
She didn’t complain, only nodded, and then asked, “Why did you do it? Why did you stay?”
He tightened his arm around her. “Need you ask?”
“But you said leaving was the only way.”
“To see if you would try to stop me. You did,” he added with rich satisfaction.
“Ohhh—I should have let you go.”
“If you had, I would be farther west by now.”
“You are despicable,” she flung back.
He feigned ignorance. “Why?”
Her teeth chattered. “Fighting at Blue Licks.”
“I’ve done worse.”
“Jack—”
“I never said I was proud. But that’s the way in war. Ask your Uncle Thomas. Or do you think the Patriots were all a bunch of saints?”
“He’s a hero,” she insisted, shaking with cold.
“So am I, to some.” And would be again to her, Jack was determined, but for now, “Let’s argue about this later by the fireside. I need to warm you up.”
“How?” she asked, suspicion in her voice.
“Not as I’d like. This will have to do.” Unbuttoning his coat with one hand, he pulled her into the dry heat of his chest and closed the edges of the thick cloth around her. Too cold to protest their close proximity, she said nothing. There wasn’t anything he could do about her wet petticoats flapping in the breeze.
A high-pitched howl rose in the hazy twilight. Karin flinched in his grip. Listening hard, he turned his head to peer at the dark woods. “Only a lone wolf.”
More howls answered the leader. Karin flattened against him as eerie quavers filled the dusk. A tremendous pack must be gathering.
“Peki can outrun them,” Jack assured her, wondering why the calls seemed to come from this side of the stream. He’d heard none until they’d crossed.
“Bloody hell.” Mister McNeal reined in his mount and Joseph stopped.
Neither man bore a musket, and Jack had left his behind. His fingers itched to hold the familiar weapon. He halted Peki a few feet from the others.
The older man shifted his eyes at the trees. “Never heard so many.”
“Nor I.” Jack scanned the murky outline of rocks and trunks for sight of the elusive creatures. In all his travels through these ridges, he hadn’t ever encountered so many wolves at once. With the bounty placed on their pelts, the numbers had decreased, not increased. Something very peculiar was happening. “What’s the swiftest way back to the homestead?”
“There’s hedgerows and fences aplenty to cross. Your beast an able jumper?” Mister McNeal asked.
“Peki can clear all yours can.”
Joseph grunted, whether in agreement or contempt Jack didn’t know or care
“Heaven preserve us.” Karin lifted a trembling hand and pointed at the nearest ridge.
By the light of the full orange moon rising behind the mountains, Jack saw the grayish silhouettes of wolves, dozens of them, spread along the ridgeline. Some threw back their heads and howled in thin high wails. Others stalked toward them through the trees. Canine eyes glowed. They were closing in on the riders.
Then it came to Jack that the creatures were intent on driving them back to the water. Outlandish behavior for wolves unless they were very hungry and mounds of snow impeded their hunt for game.
“Go! Now!” He dug his heels into Peki’s sides.
The other two men didn’t require any encouragement to explode into a rapid lead. Jack galloped Peki at their heels. If he’d known the terrain better, he’d have shot ahead. This wasn’t only a race for a purse, but for their very lives.
Wolfish calls followed them and dark forms tore along on either side of the terrified horses. Where the beasts were at any given moment was impossible to say. Only that they were there, everywhere.
Jack feared Karin might slip to the black earth flying by beneath Peki’s hooves. It took all his skill to keep her in his hold and the bolting horse on a steady course. Neither Mister McNeal nor Joseph could come to their assistance now. Jack must see her home.
Peki shied at the snarl at his right. Jack hung on and hauled on the reins to guide him back behind the others. He dug in his heels. Inky shadows raced after them, bent on overtaking the fleeing horse and riders.
The stallion could race like the very wind. By heaven, Jack would see that he did. If ever it was time for a true test of speed, that hour was now. Relentless wolves pitted against the finest in horse breeding.
Unless he imagined it, the necklace in his pouch felt heavier and hotter. And then Jack knew. Somehow, the great bear had called up the wolves to force him and Karin further back into the Alleghenies where he waited.
Not yet, Shequenor!
Guided by the moon, Peki sprang across a stone wall. Turf flew under his hooves as they swept through the meadow. He and the two mounts in front of them spurted ahead, but the furies on their tail raced faster.
Snorting, Peki stretched out his legs even farther. He sailed ahead like a ship before a storm. Wolves howled their frustration.
Jack recalled Shequenor’s words; “I give you one full moon circle to bring her to me.”
But that was before Jack angered him, took the necklace, and joined forces with these men. His heart drummed with gritty resolve. Scots he was and Scots he’d be again. He urged Peki on, beating a path home with the best of them.
Chapter Nine
God be praised. They’d made it home. Karin breathed out in relief. Those first few miles were a terrifying run from the wolves and then the hideous wails had finally died away. It seemed every time she thought she couldn’t possibly be any more frightened, she was mistaken and shook in Jack’s hold as he lifted her from the blowing horse.
She shuddered, too wobbly to stand unaided. His chest heaved from the wild ride, but he stood on his feet be
aring her up. And he’d been injured only the day before. “Thank you,” she murmured through trembling lips. “Such a weakling,” she reproached herself.
“No. Overcome by strange events and perished with the cold.” He carried her up the steps to the door.
Sarah opened it at his knock, her face white, anxious eyes combing them. “Whatever’s happened?”
“Karin’s chilled through and had quite a shock.”
Neeley glanced up from her seat by the hearth and heaved herself to her feet. “Looks as if she saw a banshee.”
“In a way,” Jack said.
She nodded her head beneath the enormous white cap and motioned to him with aged fingers. “Bring her here. I’ve a bath steeped with my special herbs awaiting her. You, too, after the lass is done if you’ll have it.”
“Gladly, ma’am. It will make a welcome change from bathing in the icy river.”
“I’ll see to your mount!” Grandpa called from the yard.
“Thank you kindly, Mister McNeal.” Jack carried Karin into the homey room.
“Thank you, McCray, for seeing our Karin safely through that ravening hoard.”
Joseph strode inside. “As I could have done if I’d been given the chance.”
Making no reply to his bitter remark, Jack sped Karin to where Neeley waited.
The tub steamed in readiness by the hearth and the screen used for privacy and warmth waited at the side. Karin inhaled the pleasing fragrance of angelica and agrimony wafting from the water. The significance of these sacred herbs, and the rowan bough hung over the doorway, wasn’t lost on her. Foresighted Neeley had joined in the battle against the dark forces.