by Lori Benton
The creek bank seemed thronged with the figures of men, women, children—most brown-skinned, some showing white blood, a few African—moving toward the creek out of a warren of log cabins and humpy structures walled in bark. The humid air was abuzz with unintelligible speech. Those nearest called to others who came running to stand like a wall of flesh, every last one of them, it seemed, focused on her seated in the canoe.
Mr. Ring was out with a splash, dragging the canoe up the sloping bank with a strength impressive after the strenuous upriver journey.
Jarred by the vessel’s halting, she reached to steady the cradleboard. The baby was wide awake and screwing up her face to cry. Clare jiggled the carrier, but there went her daughter’s little mouth opening in a protracted squall, to the general rise of interest among the women on the bank.
With her heart banging twice as hard as when she’d met the stare of the warrior, Tall Man, Clare put her baby on her back, took the hand Mr. Ring held out, and stepped from the canoe.
Mr. Ring looked down at her, face stiff with unease. “Logan isn’t here.”
Clare had the baby to a breast as they stood beneath an arbor attached to one of the cabins—that of Tall Man and his plump wife, whose name no one had told her—where Mr. Ring had left her to tend the baby while he conferred nearby with several warriors dressed much like himself. As Tall Man’s wife peeped at her from behind the hide that served as a door, Clare shot wary glances at other women hovering near, trying surreptitiously to scan bark lodges—wegiwas, Mr. Ring called them—cook-fires, and every knot of children for Jacob. Now here was Mr. Ring returned with the news that Logan wasn’t even there to petition. After all her battling to get this far.
“He was here. But yesterday he took twenty of his warriors and went raiding again across the river. Only reason they told me that much is ’cause I was with them at Baker’s and after. Besides I lived with Logan for a spell, years back. Some here remember that. But they don’t want to talk to outsiders about what’s happening now.”
“Me?” Clare fought to ignore the Indians edging nearer while they spoke, ringing them about beneath the arbor.
“I suspect the pair of us, just now.” There was hurt in Mr. Ring’s eyes, in the lines tracing their corners.
“Why didn’t Tall Man tell you so at once?”
“Maybe on account I didn’t ask. Likely he grasped our purpose here the instant he saw you in the canoe with me. Or guessed it.”
Mr. Ring had a habit of raising more questions than he answered.
“Does that mean he’s seen Jacob?” She glanced at Tall Man’s wife, peeping again from behind the hide, and though her mouth felt stiff as a board she forced herself to smile at the woman.
The dark eye peering out at her vanished.
“So far no one has owned to knowing anything about your boy,” Mr. Ring said, “but there are others I may speak to. Will you be all right here while I do? I may have to sit for a spell, smoke a pipe, come at this cautious-like.”
“I’ll be all right.” It was all Clare could do to keep from clutching the man’s fringed shirt to keep him near as he left to see about their business, falling in with a few older warriors who led him away through the town.
She settled herself on a crudely hacked seat beside the doorway of Tall Man’s lodge and tried not to look at those Indians who hadn’t lost interest in her and drifted away.
Across the creek the sun had reached the tops of the trees. The light streaming through the village had mellowed to a peachy hue, the muggy air cooling as shadows crept between lodges.
While she nursed the baby, she tried to appear at ease in this alien place where it seemed anything at all might happen. The smells were strange, the speech impenetrable, the sights alien to her eyes. She’d seen Indians before, of course. But whether in Richmond or in Staunton, those brief encounters had happened in the safety of her own familiar world. They had been the interlopers, the strayed sparrows. Never she.
An unreasoning fear crept in upon her mind. Mr. Ring was never coming back. He’d been tomahawked somewhere out of sight. At any second those women hanging back would rush at her, pry Philippa from her breast, and…
At a rustle close by, Clare started with a half-swallowed yelp. A musky smell of deerskins, smoke, and sweat enveloped her as the rounded form of Tall Man’s wife emerged from her lodge, moving between her and the light of the setting sun. She spoke, but even had it been English, the blood pounding in Clare’s ears would have drowned the words.
The woman raised her hand. She was holding out a gourd cup. Though terribly thirsty, Clare had no way to know what was in that cup. Still she didn’t want to refuse the unexpected offering. More than that, she felt she mustn’t.
Looking up into a face younger than her own, with a mouth curved like a bow, she met a gaze not hostile but shy as a deer and tentatively friendly.
Clare took the cup and sipped. It was only water. After a longer swallow she said, “Thank you.”
She’d no idea whether Tall Man’s wife spoke English, but her round face softened. She ducked back into the lodge and emerged next with a chunk of corn cake.
Clare’s stomach rumbled audibly, but dared she accept food from an Indian? What else might have been baked into the meal? Something she’d as soon not put in her mouth?
The water had been just water, given in kindness.
Suppressing caution and distaste, Clare took what was offered and made a show of biting into it hungrily, which seemed to please the woman. She chewed, ignoring the grit of stone in the bread.
Tall Man’s wife looked over her shoulder, then vanished into the cabin. Clare looked up to see why; Mr. Ring was already returning, striding toward her with a disturbance in his face.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Inglesby,” he said without preamble once he reached the arbor. “I did all I could without arousing anyone’s ire, but no one admits to having seen your boy, and I don’t think they’re hiding him here.”
He reached for the pack he’d brought out of the canoe, propped against Tall Man’s lodge, as though fixing to leave.
Clare took a hasty gulp of the water and stood, pulling the baby free of her breast and handing her to Mr. Ring while she fastened her bodice fast as she could.
“Can you be sure of that?” She reached for the baby and settled her in the carrier, practiced now and swift. “Is it because I’m with you?”
He didn’t answer that directly, but she saw a flash of affirmation in his gaze. “Like I’ve tried to tell you, this is a bad time for these people. It might be different among…”
When he hesitated, clearly reluctant to say more, Clare straightened from the carrier and searched his face. “Among whom, Mr. Ring?”
He studied her while she willed him to share with her whatever chance he might have glimpsed, no matter how slim.
“I won’t sweeten this, Mrs. Inglesby. There’s no telling where Jacob might be now. But there’s something happening might make it possible to discover his whereabouts. Maybe get a lead, I don’t know. I don’t want you to raise your hopes high, but it’s all we have.”
Might. Maybe. She grasped at the flimsy words. “Tell me.”
“There’s a council happening at Wakatomica. That’s a Shawnee town to the west, on the Muskingum. There’ll be chiefs gathering to discuss McKee’s invitation to Pittsburgh.” Mr. Ring patted one of the bags that hung from his shoulder. “The message got through to Cornstalk and the other chiefs. Problem is, there’s scarce time to reach Wakatomica before the council ends if I start out now, and I’d need to take you on to Fort Pitt or back to Wheeling, first.”
She was aware in her periphery of warriors gathering, eying them. Mr. Ring knew it, though his back was turned. She sensed his unease. They needed to leave that place.
“Take me with you.” She was shaking again with the terrible need that compelled her deeper into that wild land, among forbidding people, with a man she couldn’t fully trust. “To the council at…wherever you
said.”
“To Wakatomica?” Mr. Ring wagged his head. “No ma’am. That’s not going to happen. I cannot take you traipsing across the Shawnee nation with maybe war brewing and no firm idea whether…”
In the midst of this refusal, he glanced aside, brows drawn tight, then snapped his gaze back to her. So focused was she on the man attempting once again to thwart her, Clare didn’t at first register the cause of his distraction or what had interrupted him. Then she heard the words emanating from the other side of the door-hide. Jeremiah Ring never took his gaze from Clare’s, but he was listening intently to whatever Tall Man’s wife was saying, her voice low and urgent.
It took all Clare’s self-possession to remain still, searching Mr. Ring’s face, finding in it no clue as to what he was hearing. At last Tall Man’s wife stopped speaking. Mr. Ring uttered a few words, then his gaze sharpened on Clare. “Put the baby on your back. Follow me to the canoe. Don’t say a word,” he added as he took up the pack.
Clare did as he directed, too alarmed to disobey. She didn’t look at the faces of the Mingos who parted to let them pass back through the village to the creek. She took her place in the canoe, and Mr. Ring pushed it out into the flow, but her hope was plummeting and her heart breaking as she turned for one last look at Logan’s Town.
Then she realized Mr. Ring hadn’t turned the canoe downstream toward the Ohio but upstream toward the darkening foothills and the orange blaze of the sun nearly set. She held her peace until the river bent and the Mingo town, cast in dusky shadows, had vanished behind them.
“Mr. Ring, where are we going? What did Tall Man’s wife say to you?”
Not slackening his strokes, Mr. Ring turned his face to the side to be sure she heard him.
“I know where your boy is, Missus. And who has him. But I need to get us a fair piece from here ’fore daylight’s gone, and just now I need my breath for paddling.”
The man might have needed all his breath for paddling, but the words he’d spared struck Clare a blow that stole the breath from her lungs.
The dusk-shadowed creek banks slipped past as she stared at Jeremiah Ring’s back, waiting for her next breath. At last she sucked in a gulp of clammy air, parted her lips to speak, then clamped a hand across her mouth to stifle the sob that emerged.
Bent over the cradleboard, she kept her muffling hand in place so her weeping wouldn’t attract the attention Mr. Ring seemed eager to avoid.
“I know where your boy is, Missus. And who has him.”
The words were lightning flung against the bare ground of her heart, searing a path terrible and sweet.
She didn’t know how long they traveled thus, only that when she felt the canoe scrape bottom it was full dark. Mr. Ring vaulted from the canoe to tug it toward the bank where a feeder creek entered the flow. A half-moon broke through clouds, shedding light enough to see. Ducking branches, she climbed the bank as he pulled the canoe into a concealing thicket.
“Reckon we’ve come three miles,” he was saying, barely loud enough to hear above the water’s rush. “We’ll camp here tonight. Come morning see whether—”
“Mr. Ring!”
He was beside her in an instant, a hand across her mouth. The smell of him and his recent exertions enveloped her.
“Logan’s warriors let us go, and likely we’re in no danger from that quarter. All the same we best keep quiet-like.”
Over his hand she fixed him with a glare.
“You got questions,” he said. “I aim to answer them best I can. You going to keep your voice down?”
Knowing she’d get her answers sooner if she complied, beneath his infuriating hand she nodded. His fingers released her mouth, found her arm, and tugged her through the trees.
“Up the bank there’s a clear space, big enough we can both stretch out to sleep. We’ll have a cold supper. I’m not risking a fire.”
She didn’t care about a fire. Or food. Her daughter cared about the latter, judging by the mewls coming from the cradleboard, which would escalate if ignored. Wanting to hiss at him to take his hand from her, Clare let the man lead her to where he wanted her to be, then knelt on the ground, thankful to find it dry. Surrounded by rustling leaves and croaking frogs, she set about freeing baby and breast and uniting the two, while Mr. Ring rolled out blankets and delved into his pack. While the baby settled with a contented grunt, Clare fixed him with a stare that surely penetrated the dark.
“Where is Jacob? Did Tall Man’s wife tell you?”
Squatting on his haunches, he held out a strip of jerked meat. She didn’t take it.
“She warned me to get you away from there.”
Clare suppressed a frisson of fear. “That’s all? She said nothing of Jacob? I thought…You said…”
“Listen now. She didn’t tell me outright where your boy is, but what she did say was enough for me to guess. She said a hunting party of Shawnees passed through two days back and left with more than they came with.”
Clare held the nursing baby close, arms aching and unfulfilled. “And from that you deduced…what?”
“What they left with was your boy.”
Try as she might, she couldn’t follow his leap in reasoning.
“The warriors left with more than they came with. Those were her exact words?”
“Near about.”
“But that could have been a sack of cornmeal!”
“Only it wasn’t,” Mr. Ring replied. “She named the warriors. One of them was Falling Hawk, and he’s…”
In the pause following, Clare’s mind filled with all manner of dire possibilities of what the warrior named might be, starting with bloody-minded savage.
The answer Mr. Ring gave wasn’t on the list. “He’s my brother.”
His brother? “But—you aren’t an Indian!”
“Not born. Adopted. Nigh on ten years ago.”
He paused again, long enough for Clare’s spinning thoughts to settle on the horrible realization that the man had lived through what those savages likely wanted to do to Jacob. Adoption. Assimilation.
Mr. Ring had seemed a man of two worlds, yet not wholly of either, rootless, drifting about the frontier carrying messages between white men and red. Yet she’d thought if he claimed any identity it was surely as a white man. He worked for the Indian agents at Fort Pitt.
And called a Shawnee warrior his brother?
Nigh on ten years ago. He was surely no more than thirty now. He’d been old enough to retain his identity, to forget none of it but what he chose to forget. The same couldn’t be said for Jacob. If she failed to recover him, he would become savage through and through, stripped of any memory of his life before. His memory of her.
All this swept through her mind while Mr. Ring was clearing his throat to continue.
“Well, see, back in Virginia, ’fore ever I went west of the mountains, I had another—”
“Mr. Ring,” Clare cut in, less concerned with his past than with Jacob’s future. “Are you saying this warrior—whatever his name—has taken Jacob to be his son? Taken him where? You must know if he’s your…” She couldn’t get the word brother to pass her lips.
Mr. Ring seemed to need a moment to shift his thoughts from whatever he’d been about to tell her. “He’s called Falling Hawk. And aye, he’s likely headed for the Scioto River, to Cornstalk’s Town. That’s some days’ journey west, quickest being back down the Ohio.”
Digesting that, Clare frowned over the soft head of her daughter. “Then why have we come this way? If this Falling Hawk has my son, surely you can get him back for me! Why not make for this other river, Scioto, as directly as possible?”
“Hold on now, Missus. Falling Hawk is days ahead of us. By the time he reaches the Scioto, he’ll be farther ahead still, given the pace we’ll be traveling with you and the baby.”
His words sank in. “You’ll take me to this other place—Cornstalk’s Town? But you were adamant against taking me to Wakatomica.”
“That was be
fore we had us a solid lead on Jacob. Now there’s no time to take you back east, not if we want to overtake your boy before he’s claimed by…” He paused, drawing a breath and continued in a calmer tone. “Listen. I’m fair certain I know why Falling Hawk took your boy—bought him, traded for him, whatever exchange was made back at Logan’s Town. It wasn’t for himself. He has a wife and children. But I know someone who doesn’t, and so does Falling Hawk. I’m thinking he means to give Jacob to his sister.”
Bombarded by this new information, Clare’s thoughts skittered from relief to dread and back again, blown like swirling leaves. “Who is Falling Hawk’s sister?”
“She’s called Rain Crow, and since she’s Falling Hawk’s sister that makes her mine, too, though she hasn’t lived in Cornstalk’s Town since my coming to the Shawnees and I barely know her. What I do know is that she’s come to the end of a year of grieving and I’d wager a winter’s fur take that Falling Hawk is bringing her a son to replace the one she lost last year to smallpox, same as carried off her husband.”
Clare wondered that the milk hadn’t curdled in her breasts, so deep was the pang of nausea that roiled beneath her ribs. “Jacob is my son.”
“By the time we reach them,” Mr. Ring said, “in the eyes of every Shawnee in Nonhelema’s Town, he’ll be the son of Rain Crow—if he pleases her.”
Clare hadn’t realized she was weeping until she tasted the salt of her tears. She willed them away, determined to untangle all the information he was throwing at her. Too fast. Too fast.
“Nonhelema? Who is that?”
“She’s Cornstalk’s sister, chieftain of her own town, across Scippo Creek. That’s where Rain Crow has chosen to live.”
“A woman chief?” This was an astonishing piece of news, and suddenly hopeful. “Surely a woman would understand a mother’s need to have her child returned.” Philippa was done feeding. She dealt with the child, changing her wrappings in the dark; the baby’s waste-smell stained the air. “Can we not try to catch up to them? I can keep going.”