Blood at Dawn

by Jim R. Woolard

  I wove Blue through the three hundred cattle close upon our back trail. The sun was unusually warm for an autumn afternoon, and I couldn’t sign wind with even a wet finger. The camp followers brought up the extreme rear, their carts and wagons clogging the narrow stem of raw roadway a distance behind the lowing bullocks. Footsore washerwomen, harlots, and wives, along with their panting children, plodded together in rude masses twixt the carts, at that hour cursing the heat and the uneven ground instead of bickering with each other. The few male travelers present struggled to keep the carts and wagons from falling so far behind the column they lost sight of the cattle drovers to their fore.

  I rode in the fringe of the trees crowding the road to get past the clutter and drew abreast of the Green cart. The order to halt for the day swept the length of the column, and Annie Bower, walking beside the swaybacked drayage horse pulling the Green cart, praised the command with a rousing cheer. Blue slipped from the cloaking woods, and she cheered again. “By damn, it’s that gentleman who saves ladies ’thout bein’ asked, Mr. Ethan Downer hisself. Come to visit me, have yuh, darlin’?”

  Blushing like crazy, I lifted the bulging flour sacks straddling Blue’s withers and drew yet another bellowing cheer from her. “Lord, I’m glad that’s for us’ns. It was a shabby and discouraging meal the last two evenings, which is maybe why Molly took sick,” she surmised, pointing toward the cart.

  A rigged tarp arched across the cart’s wooden bed. Beneath it, Molly Green lay atop rolled blankets and a folded tent. From Blue’s saddle, I could see her face glistened with fever. “The army doctor been to visit her?”

  Annie Bower sat the flour sacks against the near wheel of the cart, straightened, and swept straggling hair behind her ears. “Yeah, but Erin run him off when he talked of bleeding and purges. Said she’d a cure of her own for her mother. An’ Erin ain’t easy to talk out of anythin’ once she sets her mind a certain way.”

  “Don’t I know,” I agreed. “She about?”

  Annie stepped sideways to obtain an unobstructed view of the span of empty road extending southward behind the cart. “Well, damn that child, she was there but a minute ago, I swear.”

  Hearing Annie’s loud exclamation, Molly Green called weakly from her makeshift bed. The harlot, hips rocking under swishing skirts, approached the cart. The women spoke faintly, and I caught only a word or two. Annie returned, a deep frown shaping ruts in the skin of her forehead. “I fear she’s been gone longer than a minute, much longer. Molly says she dropped off at the bottom of the last rise to cool herself in the brook that crossed the road there. Molly wants you should go fetch her in.”

  There was nothing for it except do the fetching, and I had no objection to that, not the slightest. Given my jumpy nerves, I had been mulling over how I might approach Erin Green in front of others without aping the tongue-tied lout, and luckily, the Lord had chosen to favor me again. I matched Annie Bower’s wink, tipped my hat to her, and thumped Blue’s ribs with my heels.

  Tired of slow walking all day, the gelding happily pranced back down St. Clair’s road, fresh stumps or no. It was a piece to the rise Annie had mentioned, and we went up its near flank. We topped the crest of the rise and started our descent of the opposing incline, expecting to shortly encounter the object of our quest. I scanned the brook at the bottom of the rise as we approached and still no Erin. My concern mounted. It seemed she’d been tarrying behind a mighty long while just to wash away the sweat of the day. Where the hell could she be?

  Fully aware I had asked myself that question before, I drew rein, and rifle seated on my left thigh with the barrel at attention, looked all about. The shallow expanse of the brook was a plat of brown sludge, churned into syrupy mud by the pounding of thousands of feet and hoofs. I didn’t bother scouting downstream. The brook would run brown there for a fortnight. A girl wanting to wash her person would seek the clear, undisturbed waters available upstream.

  I kneed Blue forward into the muddy sludge and had me a gander the direction I believed I would find her. Beech and walnut branches overhung both banks of the brook. Pockets of brush overwhelmed the northern bank at those spots touched directly by the sun. The way was narrow and lacking in headroom, and I was inclined to leave Blue tied at the crossing, but didn’t when I recalled Paw’s admonition that the soldier who risked his mount in enemy territory placed himself in jeopardy as well.

  Swearing at the prospect of cold, wet feet, I dismounted, and Blue’s reins held lightly in right hand, rifle in left, barrel slanted downward, lock buried twixt elbow and waist to protect cock and frizzen from scraping branches, took to wading. A few strides beyond the crossing I located sign of her. Gouges cut into the brook’s mossy bed by the footfalls of a recent traveler were fresh enough the current still flushed tiny plumes of dirt from them. I was on the right track. That proverbial question rang in my head again: Where the bloody hell was she?

  Forty yards of wading later, I had a glimmering where I would eventually come upon her. She would be enticed ever onward in hopes of locating a clearing providing a little open ground, bright sun, and maybe deeper water for easier bathing. I had myself sought such quiet, restful places too often to count while hunting the Kentucky forest. I put some zip in my step. Autumn daylight had a habit of petering out with a man shy of camp.

  The brook bent a hair to the right and gradually widened. Open sky loomed to the south upstream, and I suspected Erin had indeed found her clearing. Heavily wooded, rising ground continued to push hard against the north bank. The trees on the south bank began to thin, and I led Blue onto its level surface. The clearing was now dead ahead, and not wanting to startle Erin unnecessarily, I crept along, alert and watchful.

  It was her slim feet and shins that gave her away. They stuck bare and white from the runty grasses blanketing the edge of the brook. She had without meaning to fallen asleep, warmed and lulled by the quiet and peace of the sun-splashed clearing, separated for a blissful hour from the unwanted company of hundreds of strangers foul both of smell and mouth. Heaven itself could have been no more appealing.

  Reluctant to awaken her, I lingered where I was. Birds cawed far to the east. The only other sound was the bubbling rush of the brook. I was thinking of lurking redsticks and the necessity of returning to camp before dark, reasons why I should move ahead, when Erin woke of her own accord.

  She sat upright, shook her unbound, flame-red hair back and forth, and glanced ’round the clearing. Satisfied she was still secluded and alone, Erin opened a canvas haversack atop the grass, pulled forth a wedge of cloth, rose to her feet, and waded into the water. Her silk shirt sparkled in the sunlight. With her breeches legs rolled higher than her knees, she seemed every bit the girl child at play till she stretched, sweeping her arms above her head and pulling the silk of her shirt tight over breasts fully grown. Instantly, the girl child became a woman, a woman of a rare and ripe beauty that stayed a man’s breath and urged him to whinny aloud and paw dirt with his toes.

  She rolled the sleeves of her shirt to near the elbow, then bent, dipped the cloth in the brook, and slowly washed her face, neck, and arms, savoring every stroke of the cloth. Absolutely spellbound, I froze, unable to take my eyes from her.

  I would have stared endlessly, all other concerns completely forgotten, had she not slipped the dampened cloth behind the waistband of her breeches and started undoing that silk shirt one pewter button at a time. My heart thudded like a hammer. A fanciful and elusive dream was coming to life. She snapped the last button free, regained the damp cloth from her waistband, and inserted its moist coolness inside the open front of the silk shirt.

  Prickly heat engulfed my throat and neck. It was a most private moment, one so utterly hers and hers alone, that I expected the slap of my mother’s hand against my cheek any second. I tore my prying eyes from Erin Green and fixed them on the hillside beyond the brook, only to encounter an equally stunning sight, the leering visage of none other than the beanpole, Gabe Hookfin.

/>   He was directly above her, hidden except for his hat and face. He was so awed by what he was witnessing his slit of a mouth hung open. I was sure drool dripped from his chin.

  Anger, so sudden and so complete it nearly blinded me, jolted my legs into motion. I was astride Blue in a leaping vault, determined to expose Gabe Hookfin for what I was regrettably myself, a shameful son of a bitch taking advantage of a beautiful woman.

  But the beanpole, much as I detested him, was no blundering townsman. Even though preoccupied with Erin’s bath, he was woodsman enough that any untoward movement where all had hitherto been still and unthreatening caught his attention immediately. He proved a cunning bastard to boot. He spied who I was before Erin was aware of either of us and turned things against me faster than the strike of lightning. He jabbed at me with a bony finger and his booming voice filled the entire clearing:

  “Look, Miss Erin, look! You’re bein’ watched!”

  Erin’s head spun toward me. Her eyes swelled big as apples, and she lunged from the water, one gorgeous, rose-nippled breast sliding free of her gaping shirt. God, but I was glad she faced me right then and not Hookfin. She swept her doeskin frock from the runty grass and slipped her arms into the sleeves, her sobs tearing at my very soul.

  I came down out of the saddle within ten feet of her. She pulled the frock shut over her open shirt, and the fury replacing her initial tears colored her cheeks a deep purple. Her blue eyes were suddenly chill and hostile. “Damn you, Ethan Downer! How could you?” she raged. “How could you, of all men, stoop to sneaking up on me like this?”

  I stood speechless, fearful whatever I might say would only add to her fury. Gabe Hookfin appeared behind her shoulder, grinning like a jackanapes who’d just outwitted a rival he despised, which he had, slick as anything. By yelling out first, he had created the impression he had only just stumbled upon the scene and without the least hesitation warned Erin Green that someone was observing her bath from hiding.

  He was a crafty turd. I had to grant him that. Where I was afraid to speak, he held his tongue a-purpose. With the field won, there was no need to provoke me into thrashing him within an inch of his life. And his never-ending grin told me he understood exactly what I was thinking.

  It was Erin’s presence that spared him my temper. Her opinion of me was already low enough without my sinking it deeper by playing the brute and whipping her skinny protector. But I did wipe the grin from the beanpole’s lips with a withering glare that would have given a snarling catamount pause. Then I made the best of an impossible situation.

  There was no acceptable excuse I could tender the fuming woman standing before me for what I was guilty of, so the only thing to do was get somewhere else, and the faster the better. I did, for the sake of whatever slim hope there was, if any, that she might someday forgive me, first apologize as best I could. And I daresay I managed it without tripping over my own tongue, which wasn’t easy with her being twice as ravishing when she was mad.

  “I’ll not lie to you. I will never say I didn’t enjoy watching you in the brook. But it was wrong, and I’m sorry. You need to know though, I wouldn’t have bothered if you were fat and ugly.”

  I could’ve been mistaken, yet the biting of her lip seemed necessary to keep her from smiling, and with that tiny opening, I kept talking. “Your mother asked me to come and fetch you, and since you’ve been gone a goodly while, perhaps we should escort you home without delay,” I suggested, nodding with great reluctance in the direction of the gloating Hookfin.

  A change of mood washed over her like ice thawing. “Oh, my yes, Mother will be frightfully worried. We must go, and right now.”

  She seized Blue’s reins, and leading him to the bank of the brook, aligned the roan’s flank with us two men. “Eyes on the clearing, if you please,” she requested, prompting Hookfin and me to divert our gaze elsewhere.

  The afternoon was well along, the air cooling rapidly, and the beginning hint of evening shadows forming along the eastern brow of wooded heights. Darkness fell swiftly in autumn, and the redsticks were known to prowl in the last hour of daylight, hoping to catch elements of the hated white army unawares while they were busy settling in for the night. And any body of men unfortunate enough to be traveling in small numbers apart from the protection of the larger force during that same hour was particularly vulnerable to the Injuns’ most beloved tactic, the surprise attack. We needed to ply the whip hard and right soon.

  Following a cheery, “I’m ready,” the now properly fastened and covered Erin Green, haversack beneath her arm, popped from behind Blue. Her formerly tearstained cheeks were dry, her chin was up, and the bounce in her step proclaimed she had, at least for the time being, put the ordeal of her interrupted bath out of her mind much as she could. Whatever she felt where I was concerned, she had no qualms about my giving the orders. In fact, she left no doubt as to that. “Mr. Downer, how are we to proceed?”

  I took the bit strong and firm. “Hookfin, where’s your horse?”

  Though the beanpole didn’t like answering to me, he was too clever to defy Erin’s wishes, a move that might cost him whatever standing he had already gained with her. “He’s tied top of that rise. I was hunting for deer when I spied you an’ your roan.”

  It was an outright lie. He couldn’t have spied me in the cover of the trees along the brook without my giving away my position. But since it was my word against his, I let his fib go unchallenged. I fisted Blue’s reins. “We’ll climb the hill, get your horse, and follow the high ground till we gain the army road. There’ll be no halting. I’m not aimin’ to be caught short of camp at nightfall. Step aboard, Mistress Green. I’ll not deliver you to your mother any wetter’n necessary.”

  We quick timed up the hill, recovered Hookfin’s mare, and lit a shuck for the army road. Once there, a hurried trek to the Green cart followed. Erin and the beanpole rode while I trotted afoot in the lead. On my orders, Hookfin trailed behind the entire distance, a decision he enjoyed akin to boils on the arse. Heroes hate to guard the rear, don’t you know.

  Well before we sighted our destination, I looked over my shoulder and caught Erin swiping at tears with the sleeve of her frock. Farther along the road, I looked again, and the same was true. Why was she crying now?

  She wasn’t hurt or suffering from any bodily harm inflicted upon her, and she was near to being safely home. I hated the notion she might be crying because of what I’d done, but it seemed the next best possibility. After all, she believed me guilty of deliberately violating her privacy, and her accusing words at the brook sounded in my head: “How could you, of all men, sneak up on me like this?”

  The disappointment in her tone had hurt worse than a knife wound in the belly, still did, and might forever lest I could somehow quickly make amends.

  But after being so helpful twice in a single day, the Lord was on the verge of extending a cold shoulder to the sinner named Ethan Downer.

  Chapter 9

  Evening, 7 October

  The Green cart sat before an oak grove east of the army road, the tarp arching across its bed starkly white in the fading twilight. Annie Bower and her two harlot friends were cooking and baking at the fire. The absence of Molly Green brought Erin down from Blue, and she ran straight for the cart. I was mighty glad Sergeant Tor Devlin was elsewhere. I had no desire to explain to her protector how I fetched Erin home safe and sound, but at the same time, in tears. Tall explanations that skirted the truth, fell confidently on the ear of the listener, and got the speaker clear of trouble were Tap’s bent, not mine.

  Erin climbed into the cart out of sight. Annie Bower came sauntering around the fire, beckoning with an outstretched arm. “You must be hungry, hero. Will you dine with us?”

  The smaller of Annie’s rouged companions looked the newly dismounted beanpole up and down, her calculated grin an invitation to much more than dinner. “I’ve a fondness for men of long parts. Haven’t I seen you hangin’ about afore? You’re called Gabriel Hook
fin, ain’t yuh?” she purred like a cat licking cream.

  I decided to take my leave. Erin would spend the bulk of the evening caring for her mother, rendering next to none my chances of talking with her alone. And the thought of waiting in a hopeless cause in the presence of Gabe Hookfin had no appeal whatsoever. I forced myself to ignore the warm, doughy, glorious aroma of baking bread and stepped aboard Blue. “Perhaps another night, Annie. I must report as ordered.”

  Annie knuckled her forehead twice in an exaggerated military salute, trying to hide the sadness dulling her purple eyes. “I understand. That’s the way it be with you knights errant. Duty pulls the bung on everythin’ else.”

  I rode away feeling smaller than a tick buried in the belly hair of a hound. I had no idea what the hell a knight errant was. But there was no doubting one thing: Ethan Downer was so ignorant when treating with women, he had no trouble bringing them to tears.

  I moseyed past sentries and drovers and cattle and located the Dodd camp where I expected, smack in the middle of the horse herd. Bear, Tap, and Val Dodd tended the fire. Tap’s moon face beamed when he spotted me riding up. “Lookee here, Mr. Bear Watkins. It’s the roaming lover come home to fill his innards with another meal of fresh beef and little else,” Tap chimed around a mouthful. He chewed and swallowed. “We don’t shoot us a buck soon, we’ll be yonder grazin’ an’ shittin’ with what we’re eatin’.”

  “Light, Ethan. Don’t mind ol’ slack jaw there,” Bear cautioned. “If’n yuh gave him a barrow of free gold, he’d grump about how heavy it was while he wheeled it away.”

  Unsaddling Blue in the small meadow east of the fire, I let him have his roll, then hobbled him. I placed my gear with that of the others at the edge of the surrounding trees but kept hold of my rifle. True to Bear’s counsel of the previous evening, both his and Tap’s long guns were propped across logs close beside them within easy reach. Val Dodd’s lay across his very lap.