by Lori Benton
Things between herself and Jacob’s adopted mother had been better of late. She’d never call what was between them friendship, but there was forbearance. Rain Crow had allowed Clare to take custody of Jacob today, not Crosses-the-Path.
Dared she do it? Come straight out and again ask the woman to give back her son? The temptation was consuming.
Wait a little longer. A few more days. Possess your soul in patience…
But war was looming. Crosses-the-Path had told her what would happen if they were attacked, but she hadn’t said what such moments were like. Did a mother ever lose track of her child during such a hasty exodus?
Whatever came, she would have to stay near Rain Crow, wherever she went, subject to her every whim, as long as she held Jacob.
Such helplessness was not to be borne. After they came in from the fields that day, she would ask Rain Crow to give back her son before the warriors left to fight. She would get down on her knees and beg the woman if she must. Find the words to make Rain Crow see it was for the best. For them all. Then Jeremiah could lead them away, back across the Ohio, avoiding all those soldiers.
Or lead her to them? Maybe that’s where she’d be safest. Especially if her uncle was among them and she could find him. Alphus Litchfield would know what to do to see them safely back to Virginia. Then Jeremiah could go on his way, do whatever he felt he needed to do for his Shawnee family, without the complication of her and her children in his life.
Would she never see him again?
She tried to ignore the ache that tightened her chest at that thought. She couldn’t think of what she might want if only things could be different. She couldn’t let her heart open in that way. Not now. Now she had to get her son free, and that was what she would do. Today.
The determination rooted itself in her mind seconds before the scream ripped through the bright air.
She bolted to her feet to look for Jacob, who’d gone off to find another pumpkin. She didn’t see him. Nor who had screamed.
Scrambling up the nearest hillock, she clung to the cornstalks at its crown and looked in the direction she thought the scream had arisen, off near a line of forest to the east, blazing with autumn color still shy of its peak—yellows, oranges, ambers, reds.
Other women had found higher perches for a view. One of them was Crosses-the-Path.
“What is it?” Clare called to her. “What’s happening?”
Crosses-the-Path lifted a hand but kept her gaze trained on the tree line. Another scream arose, followed by shouts.
“Soldiers come!” Crosses-the-Path exclaimed, then disappeared from sight.
Clare remained frozen on her perch, heart thudding, looking frantically for militia emerging from the wood, for their hunting shirts, their cornered hats, their long rifles.
Nothing but a breeze stirred the trees.
How could Dunmore’s army have surprised them so? These people had scouts out watching the progress of the Virginians, who were meant to be far down the Kanawha River, many days’ march away. Why no warning?
Panic swept over the fields like a line of oncoming rain. There were more screams, the calls of mothers looking for children, the crying of children looking for mothers. On her back Pippa began to wail.
Jacob.
As she slid down the hillock, Crosses-the-Path came running through the ground vines, dragging her youngest daughter by the hand, her eldest coming behind. The older girl caught a foot in the vines and fell, crying out to her mother, who turned back to yank her to her feet.
More than anything, Crosses-the-Path’s patent fear made Clare believe in what was happening. “Where is Jac—Many Sparrows?”
Crosses-the-Path halted, gaze darting about. “No see…not…him!” English failing her, she grasped Clare’s arm and spoke in Shawnee too rapid to translate. Finally, tugging hard, she said, “You come. Town.”
“Not without Jacob!” Clare tore free to dodge through the hillocks, calling Jacob’s name. The rustling, thudding passage of women and children swept past her, all seeking shelter in the town among the warriors. She ignored them.
“Jacob! Where are you? Answer me!”
Her son didn’t answer.
Beneath her breastbone, panic bloomed, hot and commanding. Pippa screamed in her cradleboard. Sweat sprang up on Clare’s face, beneath her arms, down her back. “Jacob!”
“Mama!”
“Jacob?” She barreled through the hillocks to find him standing in a declivity that hadn’t been planted. He was clutching a lizard in his hand. She swept him off his feet and, carrying him like a sack against her side, followed the last of the women darting like frightened deer back to the town.
How many soldiers? Where was Jeremiah? Jacob was growing too heavy to carry. She set him on his feet.
“Take my hand!”
Alerted by the women, warriors sprinted toward the field and the wood beyond to engage their enemy.
There was no shooting. No sound of an army marching behind her. Were the Virginians advancing? She didn’t look back to see; she’d spotted Jeremiah coming toward her, seeking her among the women and children running his way.
“We’re here!” she called.
He saw her. “Clare! It’s all right.”
She reached him, panting, not yet registering his words for the panic buzzing in her ears. “Where do we go? What do we do?”
He grasped her shoulders. “There’s no army. A woman thought she saw a man in a hunting shirt in the forest and gave the alarm, but it wasn’t a soldier. Just a deer.”
“What? A deer? You’re sure?”
He was still holding her, his grip firm. “I’m sure, Clare. Just a deer.”
Jacob was crying. Clare pulled from Jeremiah’s grasp to kneel.
“Jacob, it’s all right. No army, Jeremiah says. Just a deer!”
She was shaking now, so badly she feared she’d never get back to her feet. She wrapped her arms around Jacob and held him, trying to catch her breath.
“Many Sparrows, come to me!”
Rain Crow’s voice cut through Clare’s relief. She looked up into Jeremiah’s hovering face. He helped her to her feet as Jacob stood, looking first at her, then Rain Crow, who came marching to them, raised a hand, and for the second time in their acquaintance, struck Clare across the face.
“You will never keep him so from me. Do you understand? Never!”
Humiliated, bewildered, Clare sputtered, “I—I didn’t keep him from you. I couldn’t find him. I had to search the field. We came back as soon as—”
“You did not know where he was?” Rain Crow narrowed her eyes in rage and disbelief.
“For a moment only.”
Rain Crow made a sound in her throat like a growl, took hold of Jacob’s hand, and led him away without another word.
Too stunned to call after her, Clare looked mutely at Jeremiah. She could see he, too, was rattled. “My sister was afraid you’d been captured, or that you’d taken Many—Jacob and run with him to the army they thought was coming. Try to be—”
“Be what? Patient? Understanding? I don’t know why I should be such things!” Before Rain Crow disappeared into the town, she started after the woman.
Jeremiah moved to block her path. “I’ll speak with her. You’d best let her go for now.”
Pippa was still wailing. Clare wanted to wail more loudly still. She turned her back to Jeremiah. “Take her out for me, please.”
She felt the tug and pull of the cradleboard’s unlacing, then Jeremiah was placing Pippa into her shaking arms. She didn’t look at him again. She took her crying baby and headed for the lodge.
Two Delaware chiefs had journeyed west from Governor Dunmore to the Shawnees at Cornstalk’s Town. They bore an unexpected invitation: come to the mouth of the Hocking River and talk peace.
The Delawares, the well-respected White Eyes and another called Captain Pipe, had spoken in the council house nearly bursting with warriors and Shawnee chiefs. Few of those were of a
mind even to hear such an invitation, much less accept it, but all listened in cold politeness.
When the two finished speaking and sat down amidst silence, war chiefs like Blue Jacket, Puckeshinwah, and Black Snake looked to Cornstalk, seated beside Nonhelema near the front of the gathering. The principal Shawnee chief rose to his feet and faced the gathered Indians.
Like all present, except perhaps White Eyes and Captain Pipe, Jeremiah knew what Cornstalk would say. He watched the older man closely, but Cornstalk gave no hint by word or expression that, had he been able to choose for himself alone, he’d have accepted this invitation to talk with the governor now leading armies into Shawnee lands.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, brothers,” Cornstalk told the Delawares. “But these are the words you must take back to Governor Dunmore. We will not come and sit with him to talk of peace.” Pausing, he looked hard at the warriors looking back at him, satisfied that he wasn’t standing in opposition to their will, then he added, “Maybe after we have put many of his soldiers on the ground in their blood, and many of our warriors lie in theirs, maybe then we will do this thing you ask. But not before.”
Cornstalk waited until White Eyes and Captain Pipe departed with his grim message to Dunmore before talking of battle strategy with Puckeshinwah and the other war chiefs.
He began by saying, “We will hear the scouts who have lately come in say what they have seen, where each of these armies camp at present, how swiftly they move. Based on what they have to say, we will march to the Spaylaywitheepi and meet one or the other of them before the halves can join, for our numbers are less than half theirs. Whichever army you chiefs think it best to meet first, my sister and I will lead you into battle against them.”
When some reacted in surprise to these words, knowing well Cornstalk and Nonhelema opposed war, Cornstalk came as near to losing his self-possession as Jeremiah had ever seen.
“Did you think I and my sister do not wish war because we fear battle or have no heart to lead you as we have done in times past? If you did not hear our true hearts the many times we spoke to you before this day, you have no ears to hear now. I have just sent away those two who came with a last offer of peace. You will have no more chance to choose that path until much blood is spilled, and maybe most of it will be yours!”
Seeing the man’s mouth tremble with the passion of his words, a chill raced down Jeremiah’s limbs, and a foreboding he couldn’t conceal.
Falling Hawk and Wolf-Alone waited for Jeremiah outside the council house. They had heard the words of Cornstalk and others as, weighing in one by one with their thoughts, a plan of battle had been agreed upon. Wolf-Alone had spoken for the scouts who spied on the Southern Army along the Kanawha River, the half led by Colonel Andrew Lewis. Those soldiers had reached the mouth of the Kanawha at the Ohio and were camped on a point of land there between the rivers, building a supply fort and sending messengers back and forth to Dunmore, still up north many miles distant getting his troops and supplies across the Ohio.
It would be the Southern Army they attacked—over a thousand men, while the Shawnees and their allies had barely eight hundred—an army of men from the Shenandoah Valley and the frontier beyond. Men Jeremiah once called neighbors.
“We did not speak to you of this until we were certain it would happen,” Falling Hawk said. “Now we go to fight the Long Knives and the governor whom you still serve. Will you fight beside us or choose to stand to the side?”
“We know you will not fight against us,” Wolf-Alone said. “But we have wondered about that woman in my lodge, whether you would stay behind with her. If you felt your heart drawn to her now more than to us.”
Jeremiah let out the breath he’d been holding. He’d put this off as long as he could. It was no less difficult for the waiting.
“I know what I am going to do about this coming battle, brothers,” he said, a heaviness in his chest. “But I ask you to let me tell it to her first.”
Falling Hawk and Wolf-Alone exchanged a look.
“Find us, brother,” Falling Hawk said, “after you have spoken to your woman. You must know what is in our hearts. We cross the river to fight. We know that for you to do so and be captured would be a bad thing. Worse than for us. Still we hope to have you beside us. Together we are stronger.”
Falling Hawk spoke a grim truth. Were he captured fighting among Cornstalk’s warriors, he would be identified as Jem Ringbloom, a Virginian, or as Jeremiah Ring, in the employ of the Indian agents at Fort Pitt.
By either name a traitor.
Desire to take Clare and Pippa—Rain Crow and Jacob too if he could persuade her—and flee the coming conflict, guide them to some safe place, beat drum-urgent under all his thoughts.
In the lodge he found Clare, if not the words to tell her what was going to happen in the coming days and what his part in it must be.
He didn’t have to. She straightened from the fire, glanced at Pippa asleep on the bed platform, and asked, “When do you leave?”
The words trembled on the wegiwa’s warm air.
“Tomorrow. We’ll cross the Ohio to where the Southern Army camps, attack them before they can join with Dunmore’s troops and come against us here in a force too great to face.”
She came to him, features riddled with fear. “Have you considered my uncle is likely part of that army? If I know Alphus Litchfield, he’s raised a company for Dunmore.”
He’d thought of it and said so.
Green eyes flashed frustration. “But you’re going into battle anyway. With your brothers.”
“It’s not what I want, Clare.” What he wanted was never to be parted from her. What he wanted was to make the charade they’d lived a charade no more. But her heart was focused on Jacob; since the scare in the cornfield, she hadn’t been allowed near her son. Rain Crow was threatening to take Jacob back across the creek to Nonhelema’s Town. Perhaps across the Scioto to the town of Puckeshinwah.
He searched her gaze, aching to see something more than her fears for Jacob, her impatience and need. Something for him.
“I won’t abandon them to fight without me. I’d rather see the Shawnees preserve their land by peaceful means, but when has that ever lasted? Has any treaty been honored for long?”
Pleading entered her gaze. “Jeremiah, these aren’t your only people.”
“I know,” he said, voice husky with the pain of it. “But they need me more than the Virginians do.”
“And what about—” Something flashed in her eyes; for a giddy second he thought it might be longing.
She was breathing hard, as though they’d been wrestling, but though they stood less than a pace apart, he hadn’t touched her.
“Say it, Clare.” Please, say it.
“I cannot,” she whispered. “Not now. First I…Jacob…” She shook her head, then looked at him, imploring. “It would do no good to argue with you, would it?”
“No. I’m sorry.” For so many things. Most of all for having to leave her now.
Her voice hardened. “Never mind then. Do what you must do. I’ll manage alone. But have you any opinion about what we should do, Pippa and I, should you fail and the army reach us here?”
He felt things vital inside him breaking at her choice of words. Alone. Fail.
“You won’t be alone, Clare. Stay with Crosses-the-Path. Go where she goes.”
She didn’t like that answer. “And Jacob? I cannot control what happens to him, where he goes.”
“You’ve never been in control of this situation. Nor have I,” he added, seeing accusation fill her gaze. “The Almighty is in control.”
“And a fine job He’s done of things thus far!”
“Clare.” He wanted to shake her in her stubbornness. He wanted to hold her in her distress. He wanted to kiss her until they forgot everything else. Discover if that hint of longing he’d seen was only the tip of things. Instead he said, “Don’t go judging the Almighty by your own understanding. We’re rarely given ey
es to see the whole of what He’s doing in our lives or through us. That’s why we’re called to walk by faith, not by sight.”
“Jeremiah, I’ve tried,” she protested. “All I do is stumble about, making everything worse. I see no way through this—”
He held up a hand, stopping her. “I’ve been where you are. I’ve felt what you’re feeling. But you must surrender your will and your wisdom to the Almighty, give it over to Him once and for all and stop blindly groping about for what to do next. Why not try doing nothing?”
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“I don’t think you grasp what it means to wait on the Lord,” he said. “To let Him come to your rescue. To completely, utterly trust.”
“And you do?”
It felt as though she’d struck him. Whether or not she’d lost faith in God, she’d clearly lost whatever faith she’d had in him. Maybe that was how it had to be. “Clare, please. I don’t want to leave you like this. I don’t want to leave you at all.”
They gazed at each other, and gradually the hard, hunted look of her softened. “I don’t want you to go,” she said, but when he tried to close the small space still between them, she stepped back.
She wasn’t the only one struggling to wait on the Almighty’s timing. He ached to take her in his arms. If he did, could he ever do what he had to do in the next few days, the next few seconds?
“I’ll say one more thing about Jacob; then I need to go find Falling Hawk and Wolf-Alone. Please hear this, Clare.” And hear my heart, he added silently. “The Almighty is good, and He’s working all things together for your good. And Jacob’s. Either you believe that or you don’t.”
Tears welled and coursed down her cheeks. “Haven’t I been waiting for Him to do something good for me all this time?”
Do again. If only she could simply be and let whatever the Lord granted be enough. Let God Himself be enough.
Be enough for me now, Lord.
“You’re saying the right words,” he said, “but only you can know whether you truly trust Him.”