Dorothy Garlock - [Annie Lash 01]

by Wild Sweet Wilderness

  The Indians in this area are Osage, she reasoned, and they have a government agreement to supply beaver pelts to Manuel Lisa, an important trader in Saint Louis. They wouldn’t jeopardize that agreement by harming a white girl.

  But then again . . . there’s the Shawnee and the Delaware. They were pushed out of their homeland and across the river by Mad Anthony Wayne. They could take her, wander on west, and she would never be heard from again. Oh, damn! Why did she have to think of that?

  Her thoughts were so busy that she came through the woods and out into the clearing before she realized it. She was tempted to push on, but she couldn’t remember another place to stop as suitable as this one. The mare had to rest. Her sides were heaving and the saddle blanket was soaked with sweat. Berry stopped the horse and got stiffly down. She held tightly to the reins and looked back toward the woods, glad to be through them. Night was coming on fast. In a short time it would be dark.

  Berry led the mare to the creek to drink, then tied her to a downed tree trunk where she could reach the grass. She pulled the heavy saddle from the horse’s back and hung the wet blanket over a branch to dry, then carried her own blanket and food pack to the base of a large cottonwood. Just as she was about to drop her blanket she heard the warning sound of a rattlesnake. She jumped back. Not five feet away, coiled and ready to strike, was the largest snake she had ever seen. Cautiously she backed away while keeping her eyes on the snake. After a while it slowly uncoiled and slithered into the underbrush.

  The snake’s departure didn’t ease Berry’s fright in the least. What to do now? She found a branch and beat the ground around the tree before she dropped her blanket and sat down. It wasn’t just the snake that caused her uneasiness. It was more than that. Every so often the mare would raise her head sharply, twitch her ears restlessly, and look back into the dense forest in the direction from which they had come. The wind had gone down and files and mosquitoes swarmed around the sweat-covered mare. She stamped her feet and swished her tail in an effort to be rid of them.

  Berry ate a jam-filled biscuit and tried to justify in her own mind her reason for being here. She wished with all her heart that she had let Fish come with her. He was the one who had said it couldn’t be over twenty miles to her land. He was the one who had said to follow the creek until it ran out. Darn you, Fish, she thought, you didn’t know any more about the map than I did!

  The sky darkened rapidly. Feeling lonely and afraid, Berry watched the mare and listened to her crop the grass. She fought back her fear with logic. One girl and one horse in all this vast land was like one pebble on the riverbed, one tree among the millions of trees, one star in the heavens. Who or what could find her here on this small spot of earth? She tried to reassure herself with the thought but had little success. Her fingers clung to the one real thing in all this frightening wilderness—the musket.

  There was not a footfall to warn her.

  Suddenly, as if they materialized out of her imagination, two Indians, whose austere features were streaked with yellow and white paint, loomed over her. One let out a bloodcurdling whoop and grabbed the hair at the top of her head. Berry was momentarily struck numb and didn’t have time to raise the musket before a moccasined foot lashed out and kicked it from her hand. She looked into the face of her assailant. What she saw caused the blood to freeze in her veins. She gasped with horror at the most terrifying vision she had ever beheld. The Indian who held her by the hair was naked except for a loincloth. His dark, wiry body was covered with grease. His eyes were deep set and hollow; they looked like the two dark eye sockets of a skull. White feathers, tied to strands of thick straight hair, hung down on each side of his face.

  Berry recovered from the initial shock of the attack and began to struggle. She struck out at the Indian’s brown chest with all her might and clawed at his face with her nails. A blow landed on the side of her head and she found herself knocked flat to the ground. Breath left her, but when she finally was able to draw air into her lungs she came up fighting. She reached for the Indian’s face, intent on scratching out his eyes. Her feet kicked out high and wild. Untamed rage boiled up inside her and gave her strength. She would go down fighting! Kicking and thrashing, she continued her attack, heedless of the blows to the side of her head and the smelly body that pressed her to the ground. Determined to fight to the end against the overwhelming odds, Berry saw an opportunity and took it. She sank her teeth into the Indian’s arm and held on.

  The hand in her hair jerked so hard that she thought the top of her head would come off. The pain was excruciating! Her jaws opened. She screamed. The Indian hauled her to her feet and she stood swaying. The blood in her mouth ran down her chin. Her stomach heaved and she threw up. The iron grip on her hair kept her head erect and the vomit spewed out and down over her breast.

  Reason returned and she realized that the other Indian was laughing. He laughed and shouted taunts at her attacker. Older, but not as repulsive-looking as the one who held her, he continued to laugh, showing stubs of yellow teeth. He pointed to his companion’s loincloth and spraddled his legs. His gesture clearly indicated that he was calling him a woman for letting a weak white woman inflict injury.

  The attacker scowled and shoved Berry facedown to the ground. She gasped from the pain and tears sprang to her eyes. Too numb with fear to move, she lay where he had flung her, shaking uncontrollably. She clenched her jaws to keep from crying out when her tormentor placed a foot on her hips and trod on her in a sign of contempt when he went to retrieve the musket.

  Berry had never considered the possibility of being taken prisoner by Indians. The Indians they had met on the trail from Ohio had been a hungry, ragtag bunch looking for handouts. It was believed that the Osage across the river were more civilized than most, and this was their territory. What would they do with her? Would they kill her? Would the young one keep her for his squaw? The second thought was the one that filled her with dread. She wept inside for what might have been. Simon . . . Simon . . . Now I’ll never know what it was we didn’t do that night. You’ll never make it long and sweet for me, like you promised.

  Berry lay still, hoping, praying that they would take the horse and leave. She could hear them talking and moved her head ever so slightly so she could peer beneath her outflung arm. The old Indian was building a fire, and the young one was eating the dried meat from her food pack. They were ignoring her! Maybe she could crawl into the underbrush and get away. She dug her elbows into the ground and pushed herself forward, stopped to see if the Indians had noticed, then pushed herself forward again. The old Indian had his back to her as he fed small sticks into the fire. The young one sat cross-legged on the ground, eating the food from her food pack as if he was starved. Berry inched her way to the bushes and rolled under them. She waited and listened. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the pounding of her heart.

  Slowly, carefully, she moved out from under the tangled brush and got to her feet. The first thing she saw were moccasin feet and dirty leggings. The young Indian stood before her, hands on his hips. Almost before she could blink, his hand lashed out, collided with her jaw, and sent her stumbling back into the prickly brush.

  “You . . . savage!” she screamed. “You . . . ugly, dirty, stinking savage!”

  Her captor barked an order and gestured toward the fire. Berry turned her back on him and buried her face in her hands. He wrapped his hand in the thick dark hair that trailed down her back and gave a tug. There was nothing for her to do but to go where he indicated. She was a white woman, a captive of savages whose cruelty she did not even begin to know.

  Fear constricted her stomach into a hard knot and she bowed her head, weeping wildly.

  Chapter Twelve

  Simon sat his horse on the crest of the hill and watched the mules pull the heavily laden freight wagon up the steep grade. The two milk cows, tied on behind a lighter wagon that followed, walked placidly along, swishing their tails at the pesky flies. The crate of chic
kens tied to the side of the wagon were not so patient. They clucked and squawked angrily and, for lack of anything else to do, pecked at each other.

  Simon took off his hat and wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. It had been seventeen days since he had left Fain’s homestead. He felt a deep satisfaction at all he had accomplished in that short time. First and foremost, he had turned his trading business over to Ernest after taking the goods he wanted from the storehouse. The stock in the warehouse had been inventoried and the purchase price agreed upon. Ernest would pay an amount yearly in gold coin. Simon felt free for the first time in years.

  He had also traveled to Kaskaskia for a long talk with Zebulon Pike. He would have to make a decision within the next couple of weeks whether to go up the Mississippi with the expedition. Pike planned to leave in the middle of August. This trip, requested by James Wilkinson, governor of the Louisiana Territory, was a forerunner of an expedition into the country to the southwest. Pike talked enthusiastically about this journey and the fact that Manuel Lisa, a prominent Saint Louis merchant, also had ambitions for such a trip to establish a trade route. Pike was sure that Lisa would do everything in his power to sabotage his expedition.

  Simon had listened to all this innuendo with only half an ear. He had been surprised at his disinterest. He was there only to deliver the last of the supplies Pike had ordered and to find out when the territorial government would come through with payment. Soon, Pike had promised.

  Now that the wagons had reached the top of the hill, Simon gave himself up to the luxury of thinking about Berry. He wasn’t sure that what he felt for her was love. He told himself that this strange emotion stirring beneath his breast was nothing more than the age-old desire to procreate, to leave something of yourself behind to show you had spent time on earth. He admitted to himself that what he had felt when he held her in his arms and kissed her was a sensation he had never felt before. She had seemed so vulnerable at that moment, not at all like the proud girl he had seen standing up to her pa and fighting off the attentions of Linc Smith.

  He thought of her almost constantly—pictured her standing in Fain’s house yard waiting for him. He felt a thrill of excitement knowing that by sundown he would see her again. He chuckled aloud. What would she think of all the fixings he had brought for their home? She would spend only one winter in that small cabin, but she would be comfortable. His wife would have things to do with, he thought with satisfaction. Early next spring the materials and the craftsmen would arrive to build a fine new house on the bluff overlooking the river.

  Simon had always intended to do this sometime in his life. He supposed that seeing Fain happily married, knowing he had a woman in his cabin doing for him, waiting for him, a woman he could turn to in the night for warmth and comfort, had spurred him into the decision to marry Berry. He laughed aloud—a strange sound amid the jingle of harnesses and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

  Berry wanted love. What was love, anyway? He had never loved anyone and no one had ever loved him. He’d had good companions and friends. Wasn’t it enough that he liked to be with her, liked to look at her, and that the sound of her laughter made him want to laugh, too? He supposed he would love a child if he ever had one. The grin on his face was continuous. He could picture it in his mind—Berry walking about, holding her beautiful head high, as if she were royalty, with her stomach swollen with his son. Then the smile faded when he recalled the agony Rachel had gone through giving birth.

  Simon supervised the crossing of the Missouri, and when the second wagon and the cows pulled up onto the bank from the ferry, he rode to the freight wagon and told Lardy he would ride on ahead to Fain’s place. One of the cows was a wedding gift for Fain and Rachel, the other for him and Berry. He wanted to be there to see Berry’s face when she saw the cow, the chickens, the cast-iron oven, and the rocking chair.

  Suddenly conscious of the silly grin on his face, he gave himself a mental shake, disgusted with himself for acting like a callow youth. In spite of this stern self-discipline, excitement put his heels to the stallion and urged him into a gallop.

  Rachel was standing beside the entrance to the dogtrot when he rode up the trail and into the yard. His eyes quickly scanned the clearing for signs of Berry, then turned back to Rachel. Something was wrong! Rachel stood quietly, Fain’s long gun cradled in her arms. He tried to stifle the feeling of dread that shot through him and swung from the saddle. Rachel ran to him and burst into tears.

  “What’s happened?” he asked anxiously and took the heavy gun from her hands.

  “Berry . . .” she choked.

  “Berry? What’s happened to Berry?” Simon felt as if all the air had left his lungs and he would never be able to fill them again.

  “Berry’s . . . gone! She went to pick chokecherries yesterday morning . . . but Israel says she went north and . . .”

  “She’s been gone since yesterday morning? Where’s Fain?”

  “Looking for her. Israel told us he saw her ride out on the sorrel mare before daylight. She had a blanket and the musket and he thought he saw a bag of food.”

  “Did Fish ride out to look for her?”

  “He left yesterday morning before we knew Berry was . . . gone. We thought she was in the chokecherry patch.”

  Simon swore viciously. The stupid little chit had gone looking for the land her pa had filed on. He tried to recall the details of the map Rachel had shown him. More than likely she had gone north and then followed the creek west.

  “Why didn’t Fain go after her?” he asked sharply. “Eben is reliable. He’d’ve looked after the place until he got back.”

  Rachel wiped her eyes on the hem of her skirt, straightened up, and tried to steady her voice when she spoke. “Israel found Eben . . . dead. His throat was cut.” Her face crumbled again and hot tears ran down her cheeks. “Simon . . . I’m so afraid something terrible has happened to Berry!”

  Rachel’s desperate words sent a pain through Simon’s heart that was almost unbearable. His arm went out and drew the sobbing woman to him for a brief, sympathetic hug, then he held her away from him. Bitter lines formed around his mouth.

  “When was Eben killed?”

  “Sometime yesterday. Israel and Eben were down by the river when Fish left. Fish told them he was going to Saint Louis and didn’t know when he would be back. Eben went back to work on his fishnets and Israel went to the garden. When Berry wasn’t back by noon, I got worried and told Fain. He went to the patch and she wasn’t there. Later, Fain sent Israel down to get Eben to come up here and stay while he looked for her. Israel came back and told us Eben was in his shack and that he was . . . dead.” Rachel glanced toward the house when she heard Faith begin to cry. “We buried Eben last night, and this morning Fain went out to look for Berry. Israel is around somewhere, but he’s so scared he’s almost out of his mind. I told him to keep out of sight and call out if he saw anyone coming.” Rachel’s voice was trembly with the fear that gripped her. “Please find her, Simon. Fain don’t want to leave me and Faith here alone for long. He don’t understand why anyone would kill Eben, unless it was for the gold he got for his furs this spring.”

  Unreasoning rage was a bitter taste in Simon’s throat. Damn fool girl! He’d thought they had an understanding. He’d told her he would wed her! She’d not said no, so why couldn’t she have waited here for him? If this was an example of what it would be like if he had a woman, he didn’t know if he wanted one! He’d been gone only seventeen days. She’ll get herself killed! Killed or worse! The thought sent a spiral of fear down his spine. He pushed it from his mind so he could think clearly. He felt sick and empty inside. Then his feelings swung to anger.

  Damn her!

  Fain returned at about the same time the freight wagons pulled to a stop beside the pole corral. Israel appeared and took charge of the cows and the chickens. Fain went immediately to the house to see Rachel, then returned to report that a meal would be ready shortly. After the mules were u
nhitched, watered, and fed, the men squatted down beside the wagons.

  “I trailed her to the first creek,” Fain said. “She turned west and I came on back. Hellfire, Simon! I couldn’t risk leaving Rachel here alone after what happened to Eben.” Irritation made his voice gruff. “I can’t for the life of me understand why she went off like she did. I thought somebody took ’er after we found Eben, but the mare’s tracks are plain as day and there ain’t no others.”

  “Then you don’t think there’s a connection between her leaving and Eben’s death?”

  “None that I can think of. ’Pears Berry was gone from here before somebody got to Eben. That’s queer, too. It ain’t natural Eben’d get his throat cut. He was strong as a bull ’n’ knowed how to take care of hisself. He’s been on the river three, four years.” Fain shook his shaggy head. “I hate what happened. I purely do. It’s a pity when a man has to die for a few coin.”

  “Eben had no coin,” Simon said slowly and thoughtfully. “He always took credit for his furs.”

  “That’s worse yet. The bastard killed him fer nothin’.”

  Simon didn’t comment. Presently, after he removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, he got to his feet. “I’ll eat a bite and be off. Fain, you and Olson better stay with Rachel.” He nodded toward the quiet, bearded freighter he had hired to drive the light wagon. “If Rachel will draw a map, the best she can remember, Lardy can take it and go upriver to Saint Charles. He might run into Light. If anyone can find Berry, it’d be Light.”

  “Did ya hear anythin’ of Linc Smith when ya was in town? If’n he lived, he’ll try ’n’ even the score with the girl for shootin’ him.”