Bonds, Parris Afton

by The Flash of the Firefly

  "Ah'll be back, baby," she told Anne with a glowering look toward the men, as if warning them to leave her charge alone. "You just settle yo'self and rest."

  "I'll go along," Ezra offered.

  "What fo'?" Delila asked suspiciously.

  Ezra turned his bearded face to the darkening sky.

  "We'll need wood for a break-storm should be here in 'nother hour or so. Besides, Miss Delila, I don't want you to frighten off any Tonks lurking out there."

  The whites of Delila's eyes grew round. "Glory be, mister, are them savages gonna be bother'n us?"

  "Oh, you're safe―those Kronks don't like dark meat."

  His laughter reverberated through the trees, and Delila said, "Git along with yo'self!" but a chuckle escaped her as she plodded off behind the big man.

  Anne wrapped her arms about her knees and watched in the lowering light as Brant began building a fire. He moved swiftly, sure of what he was about. From somewhere out in the encroaching darkness came the howl of a wild animal. Anne shivered, and small bumps sprang up on her skin.

  Brant raised his head, listening.

  "What is it?" she breathed. "Indians?"

  After a moment, he shook his head. "A wolf. Lobo, most likely."

  "How do you know it's not an Indian ―imitating a wolf? Otto―my husband―told me that sometimes Indians imitate animals to fool settlers."

  "The call of the wolfs hard for an Indian to imitate. The trill of a lark or wood thrush would be more likely."

  "I see," she said, half in doubt.

  As his hands continued to rub the steel against flint, the tinder of charred linen ignited, and the wood burst into blue flame. Brant settled back on his haunches. In the light of the fire the brown eyes glinted with flecks of gold, reminding Anne of a cat's eyes. "Can you handle a pistol?"

  Anne blinked. "Why―no." She nodded toward the cold metal contraption at his hip. "Will it be necessary ...to shoot one of those things?" Life in the civilized Bridgetown had accustomed her to the courtly rapier for a gentleman's weapon―nota bowie knife. Had inured her to velvet and plumes, the clothing of a true gentleman―not the buckskin and sombrero of the frontiersman before her.

  "You won't last here, Mrs. Maren. This land's not for the aristocratic, the delicate. It'll age your smooth skin, beat down your fine bones. So that in another ten years you'll look forty instead of-what is it-twenty."

  Anne's eyes narrowed to pinpoints of gray fire. "I will survive, Mr. Powers! Because beneath this delicate exterior, as you call it, is a will of iron determination―born of my Scottish parents who settled a land as raw as this. I may stumble along the way, but I'll get up again! So don't try to tell me I don't belong here!"

  "Bravo!" Ezra called out, coming up behind them with Delila. "Brant sometimes forgets himself."

  "So I've learned."

  "Once ah gits this coffee a'steamin', ya'll feel a sight better," Delila promised. Over the popping of the pine knots, Ezra cooked the ham Dorothy had given them, while Brant put together a thatch work of pine strips layered atop boughs of the fragrant evergreens.

  After the four travelers finished eating they settled back to watch the flickering coals of the dying fire, each with his own thoughts to occupy him. Ezra pulled out his pipe and idly blew circles of drifting smoke while Brant finished off the last of the acrid coffee. Delila worked with her bamboo sticks laying them out in a haphazard fashion. She muttered, rearranged them, and then looked from Anne to Brant with a frown.

  "Miss Delila," Ezra said. "If you're in that business, how about conjuring up for me a woman with lips like ripe strawberries and eyes as bright as a Texas stars?"

  Delila closed her eyes and moved the sticks once again. She opened them, fixing her owl-like gaze on the older scout. "Yo' woman, Mister, her skin be as dusky as the summer peach. But all 'bout her is death."

  Ezra feigned a shudder. "As long as it's not my death."

  Anne's parents had always treated Delila's obeah lightly, and Anne had adopted the same attitude, but for a different reason. Subconsciously she feared, if she knew the future, the future could control her. But now she wanted to know. To ask Delila if there were any hope for herself and Colin. If Colin were written on the pages of her future. And she knew she would never ask. As long as she did not know, there was hope―there could be dreams.

  Brant rose, and the shadow he cast from the fire's flickering light fell over Anne, dispelling her thoughts of Colin and increasing her resentment of the scout that much more. "Don't tell me―let me guess," she said, looking up at him with a smile that was as bitter as vinegar. "You want us to mount up and ride out again in the dark."

  Brant tossed out the dregs from his coffee cup. "Better get bedded down―the storm'll hit in another twenty minutes."

  Delila took one look at the break Brant had constructed, which was six or seven feet square, enough room for the four travelers to lie on their sides―and no more, and glared at the two men. "Ah's gonna sleep in the middle, gentlemen, and Miz Anne on the outside."

  "Now, Miss Delila," Ezra remonstrated, "don't you trust us?"

  "Ah don't trust no man, Mister―black or white meat. Ya'll good for nutin scoundrels!"

  Ezra roared, his laughter echoing the sudden roll of thunder. Anne flinched as lightning streaked across the sky, and found Brant's eyes watching her with amusement, as if he took pleasure in any discomfort caused her.

  While the two men left the camp to make one last check of the area, Delila repacked the saddle bags and Anne even fell to helping as she spread out the saddle blankets beneath the break.

  When Ezra returned first, Anne rose and crossed to him. "Do you still think we're in danger of an Indian attack?"

  "Could be. Doesn't pay to underestimate those scalp lifters."

  "And Mr. Powers. Is he an Indian also?"

  Ezra knocked the bowl of his pipe against his palm. "Well now, miss, he is―and he isn't."

  "What exactly does that mean? Hasn't he ever told you anything about his past?"

  "That's something you never ask of a man in Texas, Miss."

  v

  The feather of Anne's once smart riding hat drooped with the weight of the rain. The curls that Delila had skillfully combed before Anne's ears that morning now clung to her cheeks in plastered strands. Brant's yellow oil skin slicker, which he had draped over her when the torrential downpour erupted again that dawn did nothing to relieve her acute misery.

  Oh, to feel again the perennial warmth of Barbados' sandy beach beneath her bare toes! "Mr. Powers," she called above the drizzling patter of the rain. "Mr. Powers!"

  The man's wide brimmed sombrero also sagged with the weight of the rain, but the granite face was comparatively dry. "Ma'am?" he asked coolly, reining in until she caught up with him.

  "How much longer? Until we catch up with the wagon train?"

  "If you weren't in such a hurry, Mrs. Maren, you could wait this weather out."

  Anne looked around her. On both sides of the San Bernard River were great stands of post oak and sycamores. Brant was right. If they had only taken refuge in one of the groves instead of plodding along the wagon-rutted track that paralleled the wide, shallow river, they would have been spared the weather.

  Why was she in such a hurry to meet with her husband ...a husband so totally alien to her way of life that she could but dread the future which lay ahead? Yet, she knew there had been no one to blame but herself. She had been bored, and starting a new life as her parents had done represented a challenge. She could have refused, but the marriage on her part had been a whim to be gratified like everything else had been in her indolent life.

  But now, the gratification of this childish whim had torn her from everything she had held dear. It would, she knew, cost her dearly. And every day, every mile, took her farther from him. Every mile had engraved his name that much deeper in her heart. Colin. Colin.

  "How much longer, Mr. Powers?" she stubbornly repeated.

  "At this rate, six
or seven more hours, Mrs. Maren." The cold brown eyes turned away from her, and he goaded his horse forward.

  The rain continued the rest of the day, so that the river rose above its line, forcing the four travelers to forsake the puddled wagon trail for the drier land of the forest, which slowed their progress even more. Several times Anne found herself wishing she had not forwarded her wardrobe and furnishings with Otto, or she would at least now have a warm change of clothing available.

  By the time she saw the shadows of the wagon encampment, the drizzling seemed to have ceased for the evening. The party had already bedded down―some inside the flat beds of their Conestoga wagons; others, who had packed their wagons full with treasured belongings, had been forced to seek the shelter beneath their wagons. In one of the wagons a child could be heard crying. It was a dismal sight, and if ever Anne would have turned back, it would have been then, had not Ezra committed her with his announcing shout.

  Warning the party, he called out through cupped hands, and a masculine voice yelled in response, "Ja?"

  "Declare yourself," another voice called in English.

  "Powers and Reed," Brant returned. "We've a late arrival for your group. Mrs. Maren." Brant turned to face Anne. In the faint light his eyes were mocking. "You're sure this is what you want, ma'am? You can still run."

  Did he know her better than she did herself? Had he indeed read her mind? "I don't run, Mr. Powers. And I'm not easily frightened. Not even by scoundrels like yourself."

  A thickset man emerged out of the darkness. From behind thick-glassed spectacles he squinted up at the four riders. Across his arms, ready to fire, lay a smoothbore musket. "I'm Gustav Jurgens, der Wagonmeister," he told them, his English heavily accented. "Vhere iz Frau Maren?"

  Anne urged her horse forward from the other three. "Herr Jurgens, I'm the wife of your pastor at Adelsolms." Dear Lord, Otto had taught her so little German. Did the man understand her? Otto had assured her these immigrants were from the upper class―well educated people who spoke not only English but French as well. "Mein Gemahl. .." she tried in German.

  "Ahhh. Ja,ja. Ve vondered vhat had happened to you, Frau Maren."

  "My ship was delayed by estorm," she explained patiently. "Did Otto―Herr Maren―make provisions for a wagon for me?" What she wouldn't do for abed. A dry bed. And rest.

  The wagonmaster shifted about. "Es tut mir leid," he broke off, seeing Anne's frown of concentration. "I'm sorry," he said gruffly. "Your husband, he left no instructions for us, Frau Maren. But the Vidow Schiller has a vagon to herself. She vill share it vith you."

  Anne looked hopelessly from Delila and Ezra to Brant. The last, Brant, stared back at her implacably, and she did not have to read his mind to know what he was thinking. He had warned her of the difficulties she would face. Now there was no chance to turn back. "Danke," she told the German at last, with a firmness she did not feel.

  "Jurgens," Brant said, "the Von Stohr plantation isn't far from here―maybe ten miles due east. Why don't you wait out the storm there?"

  "Northers like this usually don't last more than a few days," Ezra added.

  Jurgens frowned up at the scouts, his white bushy brows pulled down below the rim of his spectacles. "Ve are heading northvest―this place you speak of, it vould be out of the vay. Ve vill make it on our own. Ve are hardy volk."

  "Maybe your men are, Jurgens," Ezra said. "But what about the women―and the children?" Anne could see Ezra's shoulders hunched up in anger, like a bull preparing to charge.

  "Ve are hardy volk, as I told you." Jurgens turned back to Anne. "Komm, Frau Maren."

  "But my servant woman―Delila?" she asked to the departing back.

  "She vill have to make do vith you and the vidow Schiller," he called out and continued his progress back to the encampment.

  Stunned, Anne turned to Brant only to find the Kentucky percussion pistol held steadily in his hand. His thumb cocked the pistol's hammer, and its issuing 'click' seemed deafening in the hush of night.

  "Show yourself, mister," Brant snapped.

  The juniper shrubs to Anne's right rustled, and she turned to see a youth of about her own age step through the parted bushes. Slung over his shoulder was a Brown Bess flintlock rifle.

  "I've been waiting to talk to you, sir."

  "Then why the hiding, son?" Ezra asked.

  "Herr Jurgens wouldn't like it." The young man shoved impatiently at the red locks that fell across his eyes. "You're scouts, ain't you? For General Sam."

  Brant nodded.

  "I met him once when he visited our place―in Velasco. He's a grand man."

  "What wouldn't Jurgens like?" Ezra prompted.

  "Me coming to you like this. My name's Peter―Peter Giles." He jerked his head toward the nine encircled wagons. "They need help, mister. They don't know what they're about. There's a man there that says he's a bo―a botanist ...and there's a bookkeeper, a lawyerman, an artist, a hatter...and one's some sort of a musician. But none of 'em, sir, knows the least bit about making do out here."

  "And what are you doing with this group?" Brant asked gently.

  "My paw's a teamster. We rent out wagons to those of 'em that ain't got one. I drive out the wagon and bring it back. My maw's German―from the old country―so I can middling well understand 'em, and I've been trying to help 'em―killing game and the such. But they need more'n what I can do for 'em. Four of 'em already died from the croup since we started out. And that Jurgens―stubborn as a jackass eating cactus―he won't listen to anything I try to tell him. Lot he knows. Heard tell he was a banker in the old country."

  Anne saw Ezra glance at Brant and the slight shake of Brant's dark head. "Giles," Ezra said, "we'd like to help you out, but this ain't any of our business, and―"

  "You've got to help!" Anne said. "You heard him―four have already died. These people don't know how to survive out here."

  Brant's expression was unyielding. "You've got to understand, Miss," Ezra explained. "There are people who need our help more. The Comanches have massacred the settlers at Parker's Fort, and that's just the beginning. We've orders to proceed north, and we can't―"

  "I understand," Anne said wearily. "The horse and mules, Mr. Powers. I suppose you will be wanting them back. As soon as we―"

  "They're yours," Brant said shortly. Then to Peter, "Keep the wagons to the river road and away from the forests."

  "Yes, sir."

  Brant's glance returned to Anne with some of its old mockery. "We'll come back by way of Adelsolms―there's a matter of services rendered."

  Anne could hardly believe the oaf intended to force her to make good her offer of payment. Her voice was as frosty as the evening air. "Don't bother, Mr. Powers."

  "My baby don't know what she's talking 'bout, Mister Brant," Delila interjected. "Sure as God's good, we gonna need you to look in on us."

  "Goodbye, Ezra," Anne said. "And thank you." Her gaze switched to Brant. "I won't thank you, Mr. Powers. Because it would be insincere. We both know we're glad to see the last of each other. Goodbye."

  The pale brown eyes were once more hard. "For once, we are in agreement, Mrs. Maren."

  VI

  Without opening her eyes, Anne listened to the dismal patter of the rain on the wagon's worn canvas cover. She knew by habit developed over the last three days that if she moved her left knee, scrunched now to her chest, three inches to the left, the steady drip of the rain through the hole directly above would soon saturate her laced nightshift.

  The Conestoga's canvas cover was like a sieve. Only Widow Schiller's treasured piano went unsplattered. Covered by a large butternut-colored oilcloth, the mammoth musical instrument occupied the back half of the peasant woman's wagon. The sides of her wagon were filled with pots, china, blankets, and other similar household goods. And in between was the narrow space in which the three women slept at night, dressed in the morning, and took turns riding during the day's trek.

  Anne sighed, knowing the dawn's light wo
uld soon begin streaking through the canvas holes. A dreary light, more than likely, heralding another day of rain and mud. And colds and coughs. Sounds she dreaded. It was the pathetic racking cough of the children she dreaded hearing most―even more than the chilling wheeze, the final gasp of the man who had died the day before, ablaze with pneumonic fever.

  Anne mentally reminded herself to check on his wife. The frail woman did not seem much better. If Sophie Von Roemer died also, her six-year-old daughter would be just one more name to add to the steadily growing list of orphans. Of course, the other families were taking in an orphan when they could. Anne recalled with distaste, though, the wagonmaster, Jurgens and his frumpy wife Zelda who had taken in a five-year-old boy. They treated him more like a bondservant, forcing Fritz to trudge beside the wagon in the rain while Zelda sat comfortably inside, warmed by her layers of fat.

  Rising, Anne dressed quickly so as not to awaken Delila, snoring like an asthmatic walrus, and the big, raw-boned Matilda Schiller who clicked her teeth in sleep much as she had upon meeting Anne.

  "Guter Gott!" Matilda had exclaimed, wielding her cane like a sword. "Herr Maren must be out of hiz mind to have brought das Schatz like you into thiz vilderness. Get in out of thiz rain, Liebe."

  Despite the gloomy morning, Anne smiled at the memory of the word Schatz, treasure, thinking how ironic it was that the kindhearted Matilda would bring her treasure, the piano, which she could not even play.

  Dressed in her still damp cloak and kid boots coated with dried mud, Anne descended the perilously rickety wagon seat to slosh in the sandy mire of the San Bernard bottomland. A fine mist fell, blotting out hopes for sight of the sun. At the freshly replenished campfire a few men gathered, drinking their strong coffee.

  One of them, the spidery Professor Frederick Bern, hailed her to join the group, but Anne merely waved. The old man, who reminded her of Father Time with his long white beard, had taught Hebrew and Greek at the University of Gottingen. He and his birdlike wife, the almost deaf Lina, had taken an interest in the young bride of Adelsolms' pastor, and it was through the old couple that Anne was improving her German. Normally she would have stopped and exchanged words, but today she hurried toward the Von Roemer wagon on the far side of the circled encampment.