by Laura Frantz
41
“You did what?” Susanna’s face was pale in the early morning light. “Why, no one messes with the likes of Hero McClary. Word is he never stays anywhere very long ’cause he always kills a body and has to move on.”
“I’m only concerned about finding Titus,” Lael told her, not bothering to dismount from the mare.
“There’s been nothin’ queer up here. The dogs ain’t so much as barked at a coon these past few days. I disremember if I ever saw the Grubbs boy before. You say he’s smallish and darkheaded?”
Lael nodded.
“You figure he’s hurt bad?”
“I hope not, but it’s likely. Mourning’s at my cabin. That’s why I can’t stay.” She spoke woodenly in a voice that was not her own. Her head thudded miserably from lack of sleep, and a fire burned behind her eyes.
“I’ll send Will down to see after you when he gets home from huntin’ this evenin’, and don’t try to talk me out of it.” Susanna stepped out of her path. “Were you ribbin’ me when you said you shot his still to bits?”
“It’s true.”
“Law, Lael—and you a lady!”
“I don’t know what I am, Susanna, except mad—and awful tired.”
Susanna sighed. “I reckon so. You sound as if you’d take pleasure in killin’ him.”
“I believe I would,” she replied slowly, as shocked as Susanna.
Indeed, that was the worst of it, Lael thought as she sat awake and soul-sore in her rocker that night with her gun across her knees. In confronting Hero McClary’s evil she’d come face to face with her own. Perhaps she should have aimed at him and not his still and left Hugh to Captain Jack.
The next morning Lael packed a small kettle of victuals, an empty honey crock, and a book and started up the branch. It had been well over a week since she had last seen Lovey Runion, and the gap chafed at her.
She should have come sooner, she knew. She didn’t like to leave Lovey alone for this long, but now she had Mourning to see to as well, though the latter was well fed and resting at the cabin, Tuck at her side.
“Don’t you worry none about me,” Mourning told her. “If Hero comes, he comes. And if he don’t, he don’t. I ain’t handy with a gun no-ways. But I’ll keep an eye out for my boy.”
And so with time and trouble suspended between her cabin and the branch, Lael set off on the mare. The morning was breathless with not so much as a sigh of wind, only the honest damp of early autumn where the sun had yet to filter through the turning trees.
Overnight it seemed the whole forest had been set ablaze. Green leaves had turned a brilliant gold and crimson and ochre. Indian colors, Pa used to say. The stately maples were always the last to give up their leaves, but the generous oaks led her down a golden path. As the ramshackle cabin came into view, Lael thought that truly there were few places on earth as lovely as the branch come Indian summer.
This time, before Lael could holler a familiar greeting, Lovey called out to her from the cabin. “My boy—my boy’s come home!”
Lael drew up, thinking she’d misheard, but Lovey echoed the words again. Puzzled, Lael recalled what she knew. Lovey’s son, along with her husband, had disappeared long ago. If indeed he lived, the boy Lovey so fondly remembered had by now become a man.
Slowly, she carried the basket past the bee gums and up the steps. The cabin door creaked open a crack, but it was not Lovey’s face she beheld there. It was the wide-eyed countenance of Titus Grubbs.
Colonel Philo Barr fell into step beside Lael as she crossed the fort common. She’d just come from the sutler’s and was headed to Ma Horn’s cabin, a small keg of gunpowder in her arms.
“Miss Click,” he said in formal tones. “You have just saved me a trip out to see you. A rumor has reached me that concerns you—and me as well.”
She said nothing but continued walking.
“’Tis the matter of the old Click-McClary feud, renewed as of late.”
She nearly smiled at his gentlemanly phrasing. “’Tis a simple matter, sir. And one that’s been settled.”
“Hardly settled, Miss Click, but rather ignited. The McClary clan is shouting what you’ve done all over the settlement.”
“And what have I done? Defended a helpless woman and child? Shamed a drunken, abusive scoundrel?”
“You should have come to me and left the matter to the law.”
She stopped and looked square at him. “And what would you have done, colonel?”
“I doubt I would have shot up his still.”
“I doubt you would have done anything at all.”
His left eye twitched suddenly, and he looked a trifle exasperated. “I fear for your safety, Miss Click. I am within my rights to demand that you move to the fort this very day.”
She looked hard at him, weighing the truth of what he said. Will Bliss had already come down from Cozy Creek and begged the same that very morning. Only he had given her a choice: move to the fort or take up with them. She had refused both.
“’Tis a free country,” she challenged. “And the answer is nay. If you need to be forting anyone up, sir, let it be Hero McClary.”
She left him then and hurried on to Ma Horn’s. Would the doctor be there? It was nearly noon and she recalled that the two of them sometimes shared a meal. She found the old woman stirring a pot of turnips, a spoon in one hand and her cane in the other.
“Stay and sup with me, child. The doctor’s gone out to see to Hugh McClary. He ain’t long for this world, looks to me, ever since that horse throwed him good and hard.”
“Well, let the devil take him,” Lael muttered, sitting down at the trestle table. She was only too glad to stay and eat a bite. The turnips were sweet and, cooked with the greens, made a fine meal taken with cornbread. As she poured herself a second cup of cider, the door swung open following a sharp rap.
It was hard to keep her dismay down at the sight of the doctor. Their last meeting made her so uncomfortable that she’d hoped to avoid him and wondered if he felt the same. But he’d clearly made himself at home here and was in Ma Horn’s good graces anyway.
His eyes fell on her straightaway. “Good day, Miss Click. I saw your horse outside the sutler’s and wanted tae speak tae you.”
He deposited a leather satchel by the door and took a bench opposite her. Ma Horn placed a steaming bowl in front of him and he murmured his thanks but made no move to eat. And then, just as she had done once before, Ma Horn started toward the door with her cane. Turning in her seat, Lael started to protest, but he quickly intervened.
“Let her go. We need tae talk.”
The intensity in his tone shook her. She turned her eyes to him, wondering what it was about him that so unnerved her. His abruptness? Or the way his astonishing eyes seemed to look right through her?
He smiled slightly as if to ease her. “I asked once before, do you always court trouble, Miss Click, or does it just seem tae follow you where’er you go?”
She flushed. So word of her run-in with Hero McClary had reached the doctor as well. Her face grew pinker, not from his mention of the feud but from his intense scrutiny. She managed as calmly as she could, “As I told Colonel Barr, the matter is settled.”
His eyes sparked. “Nae, no’ settled. Nothing is ever settled with a clan like the McClarys. It matters no’ that you’re a woman. It matters greatly that you live alone.”
She swallowed, not taking her eyes from his, and saw the warning and concern in their blueness. Wearily, elbows on the table, she rested her face in her hands.
Gently but firmly his fingers encircled her wrists like iron bands and brought them back down. “Look at me, Lael, and say that you’ll come tae the fort, just for the winter.”
Lael. Lay-elle. In his Highland brogue, it sounded like no name she had ever heard, yet she bristled at his familiarity. Her resistance to the notion of forting up doubled.
“Nay,” was all she said as she looked away.
Releasing her, he looked
down at the bowl of food Ma Horn had set before him. Did he find turnips and greens disagreeable fare? Or was he regretting saying her given name? In a few days’ time, “Miss Click” had changed to “Lael.”
“I’d best be going,” she said but made no move to do so.
“Nae . . . stay.”
He took up his spoon then, but not before she saw out of the corner of her eye that he bowed his head for a moment of silence. A prayer? Undoubtedly. For the doctor, she recollected, should have been a preacher.
After a few quiet moments she said, “You are keeping busy, I reckon, for you are seldom here when I come.”
His blue eyes held a denial. “Busy? Nae. It isna work, truly. I see a few people passing through the fort. And your cast-offs.”
“My cast-offs?”
“Aye. Hugh McClary.”
Her eyes sparked. “He shot my father.”
“So?”
“He might have killed him!”
“But he dinna do so.” He pushed aside his half-empty bowl. “Besides, that isna why you shun the mon. ’Tis your grudge that prevents you from doing him a kindness.”
“I owe him no kindness.”
“’Tis reason enough tae see tae his injury,” he challenged. “’Twould be a fine thing tae mend both body and spirit, would it no’?”
Her voice turned indignant. “You make no sense.”
“And you do? Taking a grudge tae the grave? Nursing another?” His eyes held hers in challenge. “Pardon me, Miss Click, but I see no sense in that.”
Stung, she could only stare at him.
“Good tae forgive, best tae forget, aye?”
“You forget yourself, doctor.”
He shook his head as if scolding. “Dinna be so wranglesome, Lael Click. It doesna become you.”
She shot back, “I’m not the only wranglesome one here!”
For one befuddled moment longer she sat, anger swirling inside her. Who was he to take her to task? Their every meeting seemed a blatant contest of wills. With as much dignity as she could muster she found her feet and left the cabin. As she walked briskly across the common she fumed.
He was wrong, pure and simple. He knew nothing of the feud between Hugh McClary and her father and how its ill effects clung to her like a burr. She was justified in holding her grudge, holding it tight and letting its hardness fester and foment inside her, and she had no qualms about extending that grudge to include Hero as well.
Until moments ago. Until Ian Justus exposed it all for what it truly was.
Foolish. Dangerous. Perhaps deadly.
Suddenly she felt afraid—and ashamed. The disappointment she’d read in his eyes was like a bucket of cold water in her face, dousing her anew each time she thought of it. He’d thought well of her, perhaps even admired her. Though he’d never said so, she had sensed it. Until today, when he’d glimpsed the meanness hiding deep inside her soul.
She shut her eyes tight, but the look he had given her still haunted. Why? What did it matter what he thought?
Why did it matter to her at all?
42
The steadiness of her hands belied her skittishness as she poured frothy milk into the churn, then clamped on the lid and dasher. Lael half expected Hero McClary to emerge from the woods at any moment and fan the feud she had fueled. But it was early morning and she knew him to be the kind to slink about at night, like a polecat or a coon.
One thought consoled her: If there was to be trouble, at least she was alone. Mourning and Titus were now settled up the branch with Lovey Runion, out of sight and danger. The arrangement was a mite amusing. Titus had suffered no lasting injuries from his beating, and the two women doted on him.
“How I come to be here is this,” he had told Lael when she found him at Lovey’s. “One day I follered you up here just to see where you was headed. And you know what? Lovey’s the beatenest granny I ever met.”
Truly, he seemed a tonic for the old woman. He answered when she called him Henry and helped her with a multitude of tasks about the cabin, even sharing her fascination with the bees. As for Mourning, she cooked and tidied the cabin and seemed more content than Lael had ever seen her. There was no more talk of their returning to North Carolina, at least none now that winter was coming on.
At noon Will Bliss rode down to fetch her as little Lael had come down with a fever. All through the night and into the next day she worked to bring the fever under control, finally breaking it with boneset. She arrived home hungry, thirsty, and fell bone weary into bed.
Strangely, it was not the smoke or the eerie glow seeping through the shutter cracks that woke her. It was Tuck pacing the length of the porch with a low whine the likes of which she had never heard. At once she shucked off sleep and threw back the bedcovers, reaching for her gun.
Through the largest shutter crack she stared out at a wall of fire.
The barn!
Stunned, she stood rooted, her eyes moving to the springhouse not far beyond. It seemed only a matter of time till it caught, and then the cabin. But not a breath of wind stirred. The flames shot straight up, red arrows leaping at the night sky, devouring the precious corn stored so carefully within.
The shock of it chilled her. There was no use trying to put it out, not with Hero McClary likely waiting for her in the shadows. The barn was gone. She could not even fight her despair by running for a ladder and pouring buckets of water on the springhouse and cabin roofs. Instead she could only wait and watch—and pray.
By dawn’s first light, a group of men had gathered, drawn by all the smoke, among them Colonel Barr, Simon, and Will. The doctor was noticeably absent.
With a flicker of uneasiness she noticed the surprise in Simon’s eyes when he saw her. “Last week a party of Mingo burned out a place on Tate’s Creek,” he said tersely, surveying the smoking rubble that had burned so thoroughly it had charred the earth. “I thought you got the same.”
“Any livestock lost?” someone asked.
She shook her head. Thankfully, she had been too tired the night before to see to the animals and had left them free to roam. Lael spotted the cow at the edge of the woods, staring dumbly as the last of the flames licked a charred beam. Pandora was likely at the river.
“We can rebuild the barn for ye,” Will Hendry said, and the other men nodded in agreement. “Will take but a few days iffen we all pitch in.”
She was glad for their generosity but would have none of it. “Maybe come spring” was all she said.
Truly, she was so busy tending sick folks that she hardly had time to tend to her animals. Now, with both feed and shelter destroyed, she had no recourse but to part with her horse and cow and the few sheep she’d begun to acquire.
“I’ll take the cow,” offered Dick Harold.
Will Bliss stepped forward. “I’ll see to the sheep. You can fetch ’em back come spring.”
She nodded. That left her with a horse, a bunch of chickens, and a stubborn, mangy old mule she’d recently been given for tending a broken leg. A mule wouldn’t care much about shelter, just feed, though it might need a lean-to out of the wind. At least she had a mule, ornery or no.
One by one the men left until only Simon and Will tarried. She looked on as Will circled what was left of the barn as if looking for some sign or footprint. Simon approached her with eyes unclouded by drink or animosity, and she felt she had taken a step back into her childhood. Inside her chest her heart thawed a bit, and tears stung her eyes.
Turning toward the flickering ashes, he asked, “Who done this, Lael?”
She shrugged, one of the most unladylike gestures she knew.
He shook his head. “You always was a terrible liar.”
Suddenly, in her weakness, she wanted to fall headlong into his arms and blurt out what she knew. Had he not heard? Hero McClary has gone and done it, she wanted to cry, all because I shot a hole in his still. Mercifully, Simon did not take a step toward her.
“I reckon you’ll be fortin’ up com
e winter,” he said, keeping his eyes trained on the rubble of barn. “It’s gonna be a hard one—the signs are right.”
She wondered if he’d seen the logs at the far side of the cabin she had dragged in using the mule. It was a far cry from stacked firewood, but it was a start.
“When the snow flies, who’s gonna keep you in meat?”
She continued to stand and watch Will, outwardly stoic. “Powell Cummings gave me a whole raft of bear bacon for treating his snakebite. It’s hanging in the springhouse. And I’ve got a good store of meal and dried vegetables. I’ll keep.”
“There’s painter tracks along the creek. You know how ornery a painter gets come winter.”
She nearly smiled at his persistence to expose her folly. “Oh, I know all about painters. But I don’t believe half the stories I hear, like them coming down the chimney and such. Pa skinned a couple, remember? But Ma said they stunk, so he sold them.”
He nodded and looked sour for a moment as if any mention of the past aggravated him like a burr. She looked up to see Will approaching the porch. “I’ll bring you some corn for feed,” he told her.
When they’d left, she went inside and bolted the door, but her thoughts were not on the barn. Where, she wondered, was the doctor?
43
At twilight, Lael ran to the river to wash away her troubles, Tuck at her heels. She wanted to forget this day and leave the smoke and ashes far behind. Standing on the sandy bank she paused for a moment, testing the water with her toes. Not nearly as warm as Briar Hill bathwater. Still, a smile not even a McClary could dim softened her face. Soon her work dress lay puddled at her feet. Best not shuck off all her clothes, she decided. Her thin muslin shift remained though it hardly covered her from shoulder to knee, its once fine embroidery frayed.
Nay, it wouldn’t do to be caught completely uncovered. Lately, settlers had been coming downriver in flatboats, and one had run aground on this very bank two nights before. The sight of so many people, their belongings piled like beaver dams atop their rafts, sorrowed her somewhat. Despite the Indian threat, people were still pouring into Kentucke. No wonder Pa had left the settlement and headed for the Missouri territory.