by Lori Benton
She cringed at the word, even as her heart took desperate hold of it.
Saddle leather creaked as the horse took its first steps away from her. By the time she turned to watch him go, Philip had disappeared around a bend in the trail.
The day was cool for early May, despite the sun high in a cloudless sky, yet Clare had worked herself into a sweat retrieving their scattered belongings from the trail and piling them in the wagon’s shade. She dragged sacks of cornmeal, rolled casks of salted beef, and toted a trunk of Jacob’s clothing and sundry other items, some damaged.
Seething, she checked on her son, found him still sprawled in sleep beneath the brush shelter, then heaved herself into the wagon—judging Philip’s prop of stones stable enough—and began sorting the chaos beneath the bows, shoving and pushing with more force than necessary, once kicking aside a coverlet that dared tumble from the pile upon which she’d set it.
“Foolishness. Utter foolishness!”
As she snatched up the offending bedding to refold it, her fingers closed as well over a small wooden crate beneath it; the crate slipped from her grasp. The shattering of its contents as it hit the boards found its echo in her heart.
“No…” Lowering to her knees, she snatched the coverlet aside and attempted to pry open the crate’s lid. Philip had nailed it fast. She took firmer grip, straining with gritted teeth, giving a shout as the lid came away with a screech. What remained of its contents—six delicate, blue-flowered china cups—slid away from its straw packing and fell around her in shards.
They had been a wedding gift from her mother.
Perhaps the cups had broken in the wagon’s tipping, before she let them slip. Perhaps all she’d heard were the pieces clinking together inside the crate. In any case they were but cups, unsuitable for the life toward which they’d been making. They couldn’t bear her and Jacob to safety, defend them against danger, provide a single bite of sustenance.
Yet it felt a monumental loss.
“Mama? I’m hungry.”
Jacob’s voice, thick with sleep and need, had her wiping her eyes and pasting on a smile as she turned to see him peeking over the wagon’s gate. “Awake and hungry? Let me get down from here and I’ll…”
Her words died on an indrawn breath. As she’d begun the awkward climb out of the wagon she’d felt a twinge, low in her back, sharper than the dull ache she’d experienced in that region off and on for days. Halfway out of the wagon she froze, heart beating hard, all her focus turned inward, searching the depths of her child-burdened flesh.
There came no second twinge, only a tug upon her petticoat and Jacob’s voice, threaded with whining.
“Mama, hungry.”
“All right, Jacob.” With her feet on solid ground she looked at the forest, at the clearing through the trees where the horse grazed. Shadows had deepened. The sun was setting. No wonder Jacob was hungry. Much more than an hour or two had passed since Philip’s leaving.
Her gaze went sharp and searching to the bend in the trail leading back to Redstone. There was no sign of him.
He promised. Bitterness coursed through Clare as she sat before the open fire, Jacob asleep in the shelter behind her, darkness closed in thick beyond the firelight’s reach. Would she never give up hoping Philip meant a single word he let cross his lips? Why had he left them alone in the perilous dark? Who—or what—had prevented his return?
Questions tormented her through a night spent dozing before the fire, waking to feed it with sticks she and Jacob had gathered before daylight fled. She kept the pistol and the hatchet close, but nothing came near in the dark. Or nothing she heard.
But in the morning the horse was gone.
Once the first clutch of shock released her, Clare surmised that its picket must have loosened, allowing it to wander off. Unless it had been stolen.
A chill having nothing to do with the cool mountain air night had ushered in gripped her. Philip had assured her the trail from Redstone to Wheeling would be safe, at least from raiding Indians.
He’d also promised to be back before nightfall.
“Mama? Mama, let me ask you something!”
Clare knelt at the fire and scraped a long-handled spoon through the cornmeal mush she was cooking for their breakfast, while Jacob jumped about like a flea, rested and bubbling with questions. He’d exhausted several subjects already, including the horse gone missing and his father’s absence.
“Ask it then, Jacob.”
“Will it rain?”
“I expect it will.”
Thunder had worried the damp air since the predawn dark lifted. Now leaden clouds sagged above the clearing.
Jacob ceased his prancing and hunkered at the fire’s edge, skinny arms wrapping dirty knees. “But how do you know it will rain?”
She ladled mush into a wooden bowl, found a spoon, put both into Jacob’s hands, and said the first thing that entered her mind. “Rain most often follows thunder.”
Directly on the heels of her words thunder rumbled again; seconds later scattered raindrops hit the trampled grass.
Jacob dropped the bowl, which landed miraculously upright, and stared at her open-mouthed.
Clare might have laughed if she wasn’t drowning in fear and helplessness below a thin veneer of calm. Gazing about the secluded mountain clearing, she had never felt so threatened or exposed.
A tug on the sleeve of her gown. “Mama? Mama! Let me ask you something. Where did the horse go?”
She put the bowl back into his hands. “I told you, Jacob, I expect it got loose and wandered off to find more grass.”
“Will it get wet in the rain?”
“I suppose it will. Now eat.”
“Will we get wet?”
With a padded rag to protect her hand, she moved the rest of the corn mush from the flames. “We’ll stay dry. We have this shelter Papa built.”
Clare turned a critical eye to the lean-to, roofed in a layer of pine boughs that might keep off a light rain.
Jacob was at last shoveling mush into his mouth. Around a mouthful he asked, “What about Papa’s horse?”
The child could be as fixated on a thing as could his father. “Swallow before you speak. What about it?”
Jacob swallowed. “Will it get wet in the rain?”
“Doubtless it will.” Though for all she knew that horse was tucked up dry in a stable somewhere. Unless it was wandering the wilderness too. Riderless. Or bearing some painted heathen who’d stolen it.
She shook off that last chilling image and what it implied.
“Mama? Mama, let me ask you something!”
Clare bit back a sigh. “Ask it, Jacob.”
“When will Papa be back?”
“Soon.” She reached to tousle his sleep-mussed hair. “I’m sure it will be soon.”
“But how do you know?”
If she heard that question another time…
Clare forced a smile and ladled more mush into Jacob’s bowl. She had no answer, but her son had abandoned the bowl and the subject of Philip and was up again, his little body bursting with energy.
“Mama? Mama, is this where we’re going to live?”
Finally a question she could answer with certainty. “It is not.”
“Then when are we going to leave here?”
The very question she’d been pondering since the darkness lifted. She hadn’t felt another menacing twinge, but if she was going to walk back to Redstone with a four-year-old, a loaded pistol, and food enough for the journey, she’d better start sooner rather than later.
Or should she wait a little longer?
As she turned to call out to Jacob, who was racing about the clearing now, the scattered raindrops that had continued to fall transformed without warning into a pelting deluge.
“Jacob! The shelter!”
Jacob raced to her and scrambled beneath it. Clare went to her knees and crawled within, dragging her petticoat behind her, and knew immediately the structure was an insuffici
ent barrier to the rain. It barely slowed it.
“Run for the wagon!” Thunder cracked, momentarily deafening. Jacob gaped through runnels dripping from his hair. “Go, Jacob. I’ll be right behind you!”
Wide-eyed, the boy shot like a cannonball into the falling gray, reaching the wagon almost before she’d extricated herself from the low shelter. Rain sharp as needles pounded her shoulders, her sodden cap.
Jacob was crouched beneath the wagon, peering out as she staggered toward him. She’d meant him to climb inside, but by now they were already soaked and muddied. The oiled bonnet should keep things dry inside and maybe the rain would be brief.
Once more she crouched and dragged her petticoat through mud that clung to anything it touched. Rain drummed on canvas, wood, earth, and leaf. Thunder cracked and lightning flared with a violence that made Jacob huddle against her and pat her thigh.
“Don’t be afraid, Mama. Don’t be afraid.”
Her little boy was trying, in the midst of his own fear, to comfort her. My little brave heart. She pulled him close, wishing she still had a lap for him to occupy.
“I’m not afraid, darling. Not as long as you’re with me.”
The rain continued through most of that day. The little stream swelled until it threatened to overrun its banks. The trail became a quagmire. They huddled under the broken wagon, save for a few brief spells when the rain looked to be letting up, seeking its cover again when the deluge returned.
When at last the rain ceased and the sky began to lighten, Clare gave Jacob and herself a cursory wash, found dry clothes to change into, and made her decision.
Philip was gone. The horse was gone. But she still had two strong legs and so had Jacob. They would start the walk back to Redstone as soon as she gathered up what they would need—enough food to feed them on the way and what spare clothing they could carry. They would be back in Redstone in two days’ time, maybe three, come rain or shine.
But not come childbirth.
The first unmistakable pang ripped through her while she was inside the wagon sorting through Jacob’s clothing. More than just a throbbing in her lower back, this time a tight cramp arced around, gripping the sides of her belly.
She’d put off announcing to Jacob their return to Redstone until she’d made ready. She hurried now, panic gnawing at her, stuffing clothes and a bag of meal blindly into a knapsack, mentally reworking what she would, or could, carry.
She was climbing out of the wagon when a second pang gripped her. Lowering herself to the ground, she stood and waited it out. Waited several moments more just to see.
Just when she had breathed a sigh of relief, a third pain swelled, tightened, and receded. Then a fourth.
She would never make it to Redstone in time.
Hiding her dread and increasing discomfort, she prepared a supper, watched Jacob eat it, then settled him to sleep in the wagon early and made ready for what was coming, wondering how she would keep Jacob from having to witness it. She stripped to her shift and tried to sleep as well, waking with each pain and disturbing Jacob’s sleep until finally she pulled a shawl across her shoulders and crept out of the wagon in darkness.
She paced the clearing near the shelter, wetting bare feet and the hem of her shift until, overcome with weariness, at the clearing’s far edge she settled against a mossy tree, massaging her thighs and lower back as best she could between the pains that wouldn’t cease, dozing between them. At some point, out of utter exhaustion, she fell into a deeper sleep, to be awakened at last by a pain so intense she couldn’t stifle an outcry.
She blinked, disoriented by birdsong and sunlight.
Using the rough bole of the tree for support she got to her feet, then bent with her palms pressed to it, waiting out another wrenching pain.
When she caught her breath she called toward the wagon, visible across the clearing. “Jacob?”
All was quiet.
Halted twice to bend over her knees and gasp, Clare finally reached the wagon and peered within. The place she’d laid Jacob to sleep was mussed, but abandoned. He wasn’t in the wagon. He wasn’t under it. He hadn’t been in the brush shelter.
The stream? Dread clenched her. But the water level had abated in the night. It was too low to have carried off her sturdy son even if he had fallen on slippery stones.
“Jacob! Where are you?”
Gone to see to the necessary? She turned in a circle, scanning the forest, expecting to see his blond head bobbing, his small frame emerging from the brush, struggling to button the front flap of his breeches.
“Jacob! I’m going to fix…breakfast!” Another pain gripped her halfway through the word.
No, baby, please. Wait a little longer. I need to find your brother.
She listened but there came no answer to her calls. No sound of boyish footsteps trampling the wood. Aside from the twittering of birds, the morning was still.
Waking to find her gone, Jacob wouldn’t have wandered off without first calling for her. She’d have roused to that surely. Had he been prevented from doing so? Had he—she could hardly think it—had he been snatched away in the night? She’d heard Indians could move as silently as panthers.
An odd metallic taste flooded her mouth. Not Indians. Settlers more likely, passing through in the night. They’d found Jacob alone and took him. Out of kindness. On to Wheeling? Surely so. Settlers went west, not east.
Her relief at the realization was short-lived. Why hadn’t Jacob told them she was nearby? Did he think she’d abandoned him? Is that what they all thought?
“Jacob…JACOB!”
Clare Inglesby screamed her son’s name until her throat was raw. Until her voice broke with weeping. Until she felt a gushing beneath her shift and knew she was going to deliver this baby in the middle of the wilderness, while Philip was who knew where and Jacob was being carried off by strangers.
There were fresh tracks—Clare found them farther down the moist trail just out of sight of the wagon, beyond where her own panicked feet had obliterated all else. The prints led westward. She took a step in that direction, then halted, breathing hard. All she had on her person was the shift she wore and the hatchet clutched in her hand. She didn’t recall snatching it up.
She studied the tracks. Two, perhaps three pairs of feet had made them. None with heeled shoes.
That didn’t mean Indians. White men on the frontier wore moccasins. She’d seen plenty at Redstone.
There were no tracks of a barefooted little boy. Jacob had been carried. Relieved, or terrified and struggling?
Where was Philip?
She bent over and vomited onto the trail. On the heels of the sickness came the next pang. She endured it, breathing hard through clenched teeth. When it loosed its grip, she pushed all thought of Philip aside. She’d no more attention to spare him, either to hope for his return or to rage at his absence. She’d only attention to spare her children. There was no one to help her find the one lost or bring forth the one coming into the world.
Too soon to survive in it?
She headed back to the wagon, thoughts fixed on present needs. She would deliver the child. It would live or it would die. Either way she would press on. She would—
Where the trail took a bend around a stand of sapling maples, Clare halted, shot through with fresh alarm. At the wagon a man crouched, looking at the ground. Though his back was to her, she glimpsed dark hair, long and tailed, buckskin leggings, breechclout, fringed hunting shirt, rifle tucked into the crook of an arm.
Her gaze went back to the hair, straight, and so dark it might have been black. He was hatless. An Indian?
Gripped by another pang, she backed into the maples and lowered herself to a squat, clenching the hatchet. She waited out the pain with mind abuzz and heart slamming, then peered through the foliage at the man.
Still hunkered in a crouch, he cast his gaze in her direction. She was too far away to make out his features, but several days’ growth of dark beard shadowed his chee
ks.
She didn’t think Indians were bearded.
Relief was again short-lived, replaced by suspicion. Had he taken Jacob? She saw no sign of her son, but perhaps he was nearby. Perhaps this man had come back for…what? Her things? Her?
A low groan escaped her, which she managed to muffle almost at once, but soon enough the agony of childbed would reveal her presence. Before another pain came she grasped a sapling and pulled herself to her feet.
A stick cracked beneath her settling bare heel.
As if it had been a gun’s report, the man shot up from the ground, rifle leaping into his hands, its long barrel aimed with uncanny accuracy at the spot where she hid.
An everlasting two seconds passed before he spoke, calling out in a voice hard as seasoned hickory, carrying the trace of a western Virginia drawl.
“I know you’re there. Might as well step on out where I can see you proper.”
Clare stayed still as a cornered rabbit, fingers melded to the hatchet’s handle. She’d use it if he came at her. Strike him with it. Then get to the pistol and…
The man took a step toward her. “Reckon you’re unarmed else you’d have shot me by now.”
Pain gripped her again. Encompassing. All-consuming. A moan tore from her mouth.
The man had taken more steps but now halted, gaze searching the maple thicket, trying to make her out.
“You hurt?”
Body and soul. Her every fiber screamed the answer. All that emerged was a scream as she burst from cover like a pheasant taking wing, hatchet raised, running at the man in what she knew, even in the midst of half-blinding fury and fear, was a ludicrous waddle. His lean face as she reached him—mouth agape, dark brows shot high, eyes wide—was an equally ludicrous mask as, still screaming, Clare aimed the hatchet at the throat just below it.
Her belly was her undoing. Robbed of balance, she staggered and missed her mark. Still she saw red bloom across the back of his hand as he raised the rifle between them. The hard barrel banged her knuckles, knocking the hatchet away.
Resorting to fingernails, she clawed for the face looming above hers. “Where is he? What have you done with my baby?”
He held the rifle crosswise, keeping her at bay. She tried to thrust it aside; it was like trying to shove a mountain from her path. He freed a hand and grabbed one of hers and she smelled him—leather and grease and smoke and male—as his dark eyes looked down at her bulging belly pressed against him, nothing between but her filthy shift.