by Laura Frantz
“Lael, we need to speak plain to one another.”
“All right.”
They continued on side by side until they stood atop the rocky knob, a dizzying drop just steps away. The sun shone unhindered here as the trees had fallen away, leaving only a mass of jagged dark rock overlooking the river valley below.
Susanna spoke slowly, as if weighing her words. “I never saw you and Doc Justus together in one place until here lately. Always before, you come alone or he did. I knew you’d met, is all. But I never figured on him falling in love with you.”
Lael turned, suddenly feeling as though she were falling. “What?”
“Over Christmas it was made plain to me. To Will too.”
“But he hardly looked at me!”
“I know. And that was what give him away.”
Lael said nothing, only shook her head.
But Susanna kept on, as gently as she could. “Seems like you were a terrible temptation to him, lookin’ as you did. He’s a different sort than Simon, Lael. The doctor’s got a lot of self-control. Maybe it comes from tryin’ to live a godly life. But you nearly got the better of him.”
“Susanna!” Hearing such talk, so private and unspeakable, made her face burn like never before. Oh, it was one thing to think such things, but never to speak them. Never to—
“Now I know you meant no harm by it, Lael. You merely wanted to look sightly and wear your fancy dress, same as me. It was Christmas, after all. But it seemed at times like it was more than he could bear.”
“You make it sound so . . . wicked.”
Susanna cracked a knowing smile. “I think he wanted to kiss you good and hard, is all.”
Lael turned away and looked out on the gentle swell of mountains without truly seeing them. In her most private thoughts, she’d stopped short of having Ian hold her . . . kiss her. Nay, that was not altogether true. Lately, on cold nights, she’d wondered how it would be to lay alongside him, to be warmed by him.
“I don’t know as a man can be in love—for sure and for certain in love—with more than one woman at a time. Will says it’s nigh impossible,” Susanna confided. “So I don’t know where that puts poor Olivia.”
Poor Olivia? Ian Justus in love with Lael Click? Even the joining of those words, the very idea, seemed laughable. Susanna came and placed an arm around Lael’s shoulders. “You don’t have to say anything at all, Lael. I can just look at you and tell you love him right back. You might as well try hidin’ a light underneath a bushel basket.”
Lael sighed. There was no use pretending she didn’t, perplexed as she was. “So you think he knows too?”
“Nay, that’s the bewilderment of it. I don’t think he knows at all. I think he believes you’re still pinin’ for Simon.”
Or Captain Jack.
Dismayed, Lael looked down at her borrowed boots. Was this what he’d thought when she’d given him back the pearls? But there was still the matter of Olivia. They were more Olivia’s pearls than hers.
“Oh, Susanna.” Her voice was almost pleading in its sorrow. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t know as you can do anything. Except pray.”
On New Year’s Day, Lael felt a despondency she’d never known. She rode back down the ridge behind Ian, with the mule and Tuck in tow. Neither of them spoke a word, but the silence between them was not burdensome.
All about them the snow lay melting under a January sun. Her breath came in ragged clouds on the crisp air, and although it was not bitter, she leaned into him as she’d done on Christmas Eve. Her arms were anchored firmly about his waist, and the big bay beneath them moved with an easy grace.
At the south fork of Cozy Creek, the trees thinned and provided them with a view of the river bottom below. In the distance, not far from the meandering Kentucke, was her cabin, crowning the rise and bordered by a bleak winter tracing of trees.
They halted, taking in the expansive sight, and his voice cut into the stillness. “Are you expecting company, Miss Click?”
The smile on her face, brought about by his teasing tone, faded as she caught sight of the cabin. Thick gray smoke plumed from its rock chimney and rolled toward the river, buffeted by a west wind. A tremor of alarm shot through her and she felt a fierce, protective rush toward her homeplace. In that moment she wondered how she could leave it, now or ever.
“Expecting trouble is more like it,” she replied, wondering at the gall of someone who would set up in her cabin while she was away, building such a fire as to burn the place down. And her rifle! She’d left it behind in its rightful place over the mantle, thinking it undisturbed. If anything should happen to her gun . . .
If it were a traveler put out by the storm, in want of a dry spot, she could understand. But travelers were few in winter, and by now, with the thaw, any such trespasser should have been well on his way.
By the time they reached the cabin, her dander was high. Without waiting for him to help her down, she slipped off the bay and made for the porch in her stocking feet, taking notice of the large, muddy footprints of someone who had gone before.
With Ian at her heels, she pushed open the cabin door. And there at the table, cleaning his rifle, sat Ransom.
Ransom Dunbar Click had come home. That first night he lay a considerable sum of money on the table from Neddy’s savings and divided it equally with her. When she protested, he said slowly and thoughtfully, “I reckon you earned it, seein’ Uncle Neddy like you did when nobody else would. Besides, he’d want you to have it.”
And so she tucked her portion away in her trunk, thinking of how it might carry her to Briar Hill come spring. But the money mattered little and by the second day was forgotten. What mattered was that Ransom was home—Ransom, who had grown so tall he had to stoop to enter the door frame, whose big boots now dwarfed her moccasins as they dried together by the fire, and whose appetite promised to keep her elbow deep in flour and meal as he ate his fill of bread and pudding and pie. And he was only fourteen.
That first night they sat up and talked long past midnight.
“When I got your letter about Uncle Neddy, I knew I’d best shuck off. But I had to study on things a while first,” he told her, depositing a small plug of tobacco in his jaw. “Turned out to be what I’d been waitin’ for, hatin’ Bardstown like I did.”
“I hardly recognized you, it’s been so long.”
“Too long. I ain’t no town-lover, that’s for sure. Bardstown was makin’ a hard man out of me. Ever spring I dreamed of settin’ out corn and tobacco and havin’ my own homeplace. But I couldn’t leave Ma, not till she was settled. When I got your letter and learned the facts about Neddy, I just had to come.”
Her smile was bright despite Ian’s simple good-bye on the doorstep and the hollowness she felt without him. “I’m glad you’ve come back, Ransom. You’ll be good company, truly.”
He looked about the tidy cabin, noting its clean spareness and the herbs that crowded the rafters. It might have been a man’s cabin, save the colorful quilt atop the corner bed and the rag rug at the washstand. A bunch of bittersweet graced the table.
“I misdoubted you could keep on here, being so lonesome and the like. But I done took a look around and things ain’t unsightly. You sure got a heap of firewood.”
“The wood’s not my doing,” she admitted, and told him of coming home and finding it split and stacked, as well as the fence mended and new shingles on the shed. She told him too about the burning of the barn and Hero McClary and how not a cinder had touched the cabin or the springhouse on that windless night. But she didn’t mention how the McClarys met their demise.
Despite his fatigue from travel, his eyes shone. “I been prayin’ the Lord would give you your daily provision and keep you from harm. I reckon He has.”
His words gave her a slight start, and she felt the boy before her was more stranger than brother. But the warmth of his manner and the openness of his speech drew her in. She studied him, trying to tease
out what had changed about him, despite his being much the same. He was lean like Neddy and taller than she herself, and the winning smile that had been his in childhood was warm and unaltered, as was his shock of dark hair.
“You ain’t my baby brother no more, for sure and for certain,” Lael teased, lapsing into settlement speech.
With a grin, he leaned forward and spit into the fire, a gesture she had always disliked but one that oddly did not mar his charm. All at once he sobered and discarded the tobacco.
“I ain’t the same, Sister,” he said. “I died back there in Bards–town. Died to my trespasses and sins. You see, like it or not, I’m a believer.”
A believer. What did it all mean? Lael recounted the number of believers she knew. Ian Justus. Will and Susanna. The mother of Sadie Floyd. And, in her quiet way, Ma Horn. And now, her own brother.
Truly, they needed a preacher in the settlement.
58
Blessedly, there was a break in the weather. The sun deigned to shine on their first medical call together, banishing the rain yet leaving behind mud as thick and black as chicory coffee. Will had returned Pandora hale and hearty, and Lael now rode beside Ian, saddlebags full of herbs, just as his own were full of his medicines. Curiously, the call had not come from Fort Click or even the settlement itself but from Cobb’s Station, many miles north, a recent hub of military activity.
“I never thought to see you packing a gun,” she said as they rode out.
“Neither did I,” he confessed, eyeing hers. “But ’twas either that or have half the militia accompany us, including Colonel Barr.”
“Well, if you can shoot as well as you fiddle, I might have left mine at home,” she teased.
He grinned, then sobered. “I’m sorry we have tae spend the night. With all the soldiers aboot, you’ll likely have half a dozen marriage proposals by morning.”
She squinted up at the sun beneath her straw hat and smiled. “What a bother.”
He tipped his hat forward. “Of course, I could simply tell them you’re my wife.”
“And what would you do with me come nightfall?” she said. “Best say I’m your sister, like Abram of old.” She’d just read the Old Testament account and was amazed that a man of God could be so deceitful.
“The lie earned him nae favors with Pharaoh or the Almighty,” he reminded, reaching for his canteen and offering her a drink.
“Or Sarai,” Lael added, taking out her own water. “Scripture says she was very beautiful.”
“Bonny women drive men tae desperate measures,” he murmured, eyeing the woods.
She leaned forward and patted Pandora’s sleek neck. All her carefully ordered emotions, reviewed and subdued in the eight days since New Year’s, began fraying. What if Susanna was right? What if he was in love with her?
Mercifully, the pickets of the station finally came into view. It was dusk when they rode in, bone weary and famished. An aura of tension penetrated the gloom, and when the gates swung open to reveal a dozen armed men, Lael knew there had been trouble.
An officer approached and took their horses with a terse command. “Major Bristow needs you in the northeast blockhouse.” There they found several men on pallets, while one, the most gravely wounded, lay on top of a table near the fire. But this was not why they’d been summoned to the fort in the first place.
The major greeted them, his news of the attack followed by a coughing fit. The fort’s commanding officer was sorely in need of a doctor, as was his wife, who awaited Lael in a nearby cabin. Consumption, she thought, and glanced at Ian who was removing her cape and then his own coat. But the prostrate soldiers demanded their immediate attention.
There had been a small skirmish shortly after dawn when the livestock was driven down to the river to drink. A small party of Indians had been hiding in the dense brush along the bank and fired upon the unsuspecting soldiers.
Lael could see straightaway their bandages needed changing, and she set about doing this, fetching warm water and a pile of clean cloths, while Ian tended to the man on the table, talking in low tones with the major.
The clock on the mantle ticked sure and steady as a heartbeat and proclaimed it nearly midnight when she finally sat down, dog tired, to watch him work. Many miles they’d ridden this day, and he had yet to rest. Would he stay up all night?
Soon a soldier entered carrying a tray of venison broth and bread. From where she sat, the aroma smelled like the richest of foods, and even the stale bread was a delight. Ian said a brief blessing, his voice quiet and steady, and they sat side by side, crumbling the bread into the broth and sharing a jug of sweet cider.
“You’re an answer tae my prayers, ye ken.”
“I’ve not done much,” she said, ashamed she’d held out on working with him so long. “You seem to manage fine all by yourself.”
“’Tis a strange thing tae finish one war and begin another,” he uttered, finishing his food.
“George Washington’s war, you mean? And now this?”
“Aye.” He took the empty bowl from her hands. “You need tae rest. Take the loft. I canna sleep tonight.”
Without protest she climbed the steps to the simple pallet, guided by the light of a single candle. Before dawn she was on her feet again, as much to check on him as the wounded men. “I dinna ken,” he said from the shadows. “Tho’ the wounds are clean, they still fester.”
She came to stand beside him and looked down at the unconscious soldier. “All the lead is out?”
“Every ball.”
The man’s pallor beneath his bushy beard was ghostlike and his breathing uneasy. Some dim memory pulled at her from the past. “I remember Pa saying the Indians used some sort of poison to taint their lead and arrowheads for battle.”
“Poison?”
“Some herb or plant extract that could taint a man’s flesh.”
“And the remedy?”
“I don’t recollect exactly,” she said wearily. “But a walnut poultice gives the best draw.”
He ran one hand through his hair in agitation, though he managed a wry grin. “I’m afraid I dinna have any walnuts in my medical bag.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “You don’t, but I do. I picked a good bushel for Ma Horn in the fall and kept a few in my saddlebags. But we’ll have to borrow some salt and flour to make the poultice.”
Together they began the tedious process of cracking the tough hulls, then beating them with salt and flour to make a paste. He watched closely as she smeared the mixture on clean cloths and placed them over the man’s chest and leg wounds.
“If walnuts are scarce, sometimes honey will do. We’ll know by morning anyhow.” She turned and began washing up, aware that he watched her. “I suppose they don’t teach you such things in medical school.”
He shook his head, and the lines of weariness deepened about his eyes. “Walnut poultices? Nae. I’m beginning tae find my training sorely lacking.”
The other men began to stir, and Lael moved about spooning them broth and water until Major Bristow appeared, calling her away to see his wife. She was glad to go, breathing in the fresh air outside the stale blockhouse, taking in the gunmetal-gray sky and the persisting feeling of gloom all around her.
She was ushered into a spacious cabin where a woman lay in a corner bed. Lael started at the sight of her, so different than what she’d expected. This was a mere girl, a fading flower next to the much older major. Lael sensed the harshness and deprivations of frontier life did not suit her. Indeed, she hardly smiled and returned no greeting as Lael came near.
“Your husband tells me you feel poorly,” Lael said. “Perhaps I can help, if you tell me what the trouble is.”
The girl colored, then rested thin hands atop her stomach. “I think I might be expecting but hope to heaven I’m not.”
Lael was relieved, for this was a simple matter next to consumption. “I’ll just ask you some questions, and that should tell us if a baby’s on the way and when. Dr.
Justus is more skilled than I in these matters, but he’s busy treating the wounded men. He can follow up with you when I’m finished.”
Tiny and narrow-hipped, she hardly seemed fit physically to be a mother. Lael blended some raspberry tea to help with any nausea and calculated the baby would come before the heat of July. The girl looked sour as buttermilk at the news, though lately the thought of babies turned Lael herself to mush. As she packed up her saddlebags, she remembered her own vivid dream. Of childbirth and Captain Jack. Even in her dream the desire to hold her baby had been sure and strong. Would the major’s wife not feel the same in time?
As she shut the cabin door and walked across the busy common, the feeling of being hemmed in grew stronger. Surely they could get away soon. She missed hearth and home in this forbidding place, though at least Ransom was home to tend to matters in her absence. She chafed at the thought of the long ride ahead. Emptying herself of all feeling when with Ian was proving harder than she’d ever imagined.
The blockhouse was empty save two soldiers moving among the wounded. “Where’s Dr. Justus?” she asked.
One shrugged. “He wanted to see the prisoners, though I ain’t sure why. They’re to be executed on the morrow.”
Prisoners? She turned to go, but one soldier came forward and caught her arm. “Major Bristow don’t want any womenfolk around them Cherokee.”
She pulled her arm free. “I don’t take orders from the major. Now tell me where Dr. Justus is, or I’ll hunt him down myself.”
His expression turned surly. “You ain’t no Indian lover, are ye?”
She opened the door and went out, saddlebags heavy in her arms. Truly, she didn’t need their help. It was obvious enough where Ian was. In the middle of the common stood a crude building, heavily guarded, with metal bars at the lone window. Why hadn’t she noticed it before?
The soldier dogged her every step. She walked with confidence, like she’d been ordered to the stockade instead of away from it, and shifted the saddlebags in her arms. Her purposeful stride paid off and a guard moved to open the thick door. But the man behind her whined, “Major Bristow said she ain’t supposed to mingle with them Cherokee.”