Thomas could still not find the breath, or the words. He held up a hand, shaking, and Gruener took the now-empty cup and passed it to someone behind him, who refilled it and handed it back. Thomas downed that as well and swiped his forearm across his mouth before forcing himself to look the man in the face.
This was not the time or the place to dissolve into hysterics himself.
“She—I—we were taken. Indians. Had to come back and warn you, they’re planning an attack all up and down the trace—”
Gruener’s hands were hard now, shaking him. “Where is she?”
“She—was too weary to run the whole way back. Insisted I leave her.”
A tearing wail rose, somewhere back in the crowd. Kate’s mama, likely. Her pa’s blue eyes narrowed. “You left her? You left my daughter in the hands of—”
The glancing blow felled him, landing well enough before two or three men pulled Gruener away, but Thomas pushed himself back up. The world spun around him.
While Gruener lunged against the other men’s hands, Thomas shook his head, trying to sort out the words. “Nay. Listen. She has—a chance, since they’d not yet killed either one of us. And once we get word to the militia, get the warning out, I’m going after her.”
Gruener stopped struggling, but still glared, his blue eyes feral, teeth gleaming against his beard.
“I am going after her,” Thomas repeated. “I’ll not leave her. And I’ve reason to believe they’ll not hurt her.” Holding the man’s gaze, he dragged another breath deep into his lungs. Everything ached. “I promise, if there’s any way to accomplish it, I’ll fetch your daughter back. I have—a plan. But I need your help.”
The older man gradually relented, then shrugged off the other men’s hands. “Come along,” he said. “We’ll talk.”
Amazing how sweet sleep could be on the bare ground, with naught but a blanket for warmth or comfort. Kate woke before dawn to the chorus of the forest birds and, trying to be as still as she could, lay watching the sky lighten.
I give You this day, Lord. Help me—help all of us. Help me be strong. Help Thomas reach my family in time. Lord, look upon all of us and have pity on where we are.
She felt cradled by peace—strange, considering the circumstances.
Around her, the men stirred and rolled to their feet, their conversation a bare murmur against the sounds of the woods. Crying Bird threw her a glare as she sat up. Disgusted to still find her here, perhaps? Kate squelched a smile at the thought.
And in the next moment, a wave of fear swept over her, stealing her breath.There was no guarantee that they’d not take her life at any moment. The thought of her family—or Thomas—never knowing her fate…
Be brave, sweet Kate.
She was trying…oh, she was trying.
Lord…please.
But her prayers seemed exhausted for the moment. And God either held her life, and held it more securely than any man ever could, or He did not. Nothing she could do, or say, would alter that. Only He could sustain her in this.
Karl Gruener sat heavily on a piece of log that served as a chair. He motioned to Thomas to do the same across from him, then dragged both hands through his hair. Mrs. Gruener handed Thomas a bowl of mush, and while he ate, Kate’s papa watched him. Jenkins and his team, Murphy, and the Hughes men all trickled closer.
“It started in Danville,” Thomas said, once he’d gulped down the first bowl. Mrs. Gruener took it away empty and brought it back full again. “I ran into a Shawnee brave I once knew—and you all know how the Shawnee are full of anger right now. He and his companions questioned me right hard about where we were going, and I didn’t give them a straight answer, but their interest didn’t set easy with me. So that first night out, I watched, and sure enough, they showed up. I was in the process of making my way back to camp to warn y’all, and Kate—Miss Gruener—came wandering out from camp. I tried to tell her to go back, but—too late. We were both taken.”
He went on to explain how the braves had argued and he had overheard their plans, and how he and Kate had decided that him going back was their best chance of everyone surviving—or of the most folk surviving, at least. Gruener dropped his head at that, and Jenkins only gave Thomas a searching look. “I’ll go on up the trace, if someone’ll ride with me,” one of his team said, and the oldest of the Hughes boys said that he’d go as well, back down the trace toward Danville.
Jacob gave Thomas a last baleful glare and said that he’d ride with his brother.
“Tell the militia to send word to Nat Carrington in particular,” Thomas said. “Tell them to pass the word down the trace and then up as far as Boonesborough and back down to the gap and beyond, if necessary.”
“We’ll do that,” Jim Hughes said, and turned away to begin preparations.
Most of the men left to do the same, gathering ammunition, going to talk to the ones who owned the station to see whether they could stay or needed to hurry on to the next fort up the trace. Only Jenkins and the Gruener family lingered.
“Were you a captive before?” Jenkins asked softly. There was no accusation in his voice, only curiosity.
Gruener’s head came up for Thomas’s answer, and he could see the wetness on the man’s bearded face. His wife—Kate’s mama—knelt beside him, her face still half hidden in her husband’s shoulder as she peered at him, also still weeping.
“I was, aye,” Thomas said. “With the Shawnee for nigh on two years. I still speak the language fairly well.”
Jenkins nodded. “I thought I recollected someone saying you’d been one of those. Too many in that situation.”
Thomas gave a quick nod, then turned to Kate’s pa and mama. “It’s why I can say with some confidence that they’ll treat Kate well enough, should they decide to keep her. But it’s getting her back that might be tricky. Unless—unless they somehow grant me favor as an adopted member of their people. But even then—” He drew a breath then blew it out. “I need—some provisions. Things the Indians would value.”
“You mean to trade for her,” Gruener said, slowly.
Thomas winced a little. “Mm…bride price, more like.”
The camp went absolutely still.
“If I appeal to them on behalf of her family here,” Thomas rushed on, “’twill make no difference. They see the adoption of captives as their rightful due, after a loss of their own family members. Once adopted, that person is no longer considered white but is Shawnee or whatever tribe they’re adopted into. But if I go in, asking for her as—as my own—”
He faltered, heart pounding more at the moment than when he and Kate were actually taken.
Jenkins was rubbing the back of his neck, looking half amused, half thoughtful. Gruener’s gaze was like to bore a burning hole through Thomas again, and Kate’s mama had risen, one hand over her mouth, eyes closed.
Gruener waved a hand, glancing about at his children. “Go. All of you. Find something else to do for a few minutes.”
Amongst the protest rising from them all, Dulsey herded and shooed them along, casting her own last reproachful glance back at Thomas.
This was not going well.
“How long will it take?” Gruener said at last.
Thomas spread his hands. “No way of knowing, really. On horseback—I can make the towns in a few days, but depending upon where they go, it might take me longer to find her. Then a few days back.”
“What trust can you put in that Shawnee you knew?” Jenkins asked. Thomas shrugged. “He was a friend once. But they’re hurt and angry that I never returned—even though many of us came back unwillingly.”
“How can you say that?” Mrs. Gruener said.
He regarded her calmly for a moment. How to make her understand? “Many were so young when taken, ’tis all they knew. Some had husbands, wives, children by the time they were returned. ’Twas complicated.”
Her eyes welled again, and she turned, went to the fire, and poured a mug of coffee and brought it to him. Mouth
tight, she examined him critically. “You’re wounded?”
The coffee was hot and bracing. “A cut on my scalp, nothing more.” He drank again, barely stifling a sigh of delight. “Very fine brew, ma’am.”
Her gaze lost none of its severity. “Let me see,” she said suddenly, and being too weary to argue, he tipped his head obligingly.
Fingertips probed, more gently than he expected. She huffed. “Let me get salve and something to clean it with.”
“So,” Gruener said, as his wife hustled away. “We’ve little choice but to provision you and let you go.”
The hardness had returned to his jawline. Big hands rested on his knees. Beside him, Jenkins made no comment.
“Can you think of aught else we could do?”
Gruener swallowed, then slowly shook his head. He glanced up at Jenkins, who lifted a hand in a gesture of helplessness. “I think,” the pack master said, “if anyone can get her back, it’s Bledsoe.” He looked from one to the other, then added, “And seeing as how you folk have more to talk over, which you don’t need me for—”
He gave a small wave and strode away.
Mrs. Gruener returned and set to work cleaning the cut. “I washed in the creek during the night,” Thomas said, “but I doubt I got all the blood out.”
“’Tisn’t bad,” she said gruffly.
While she dipped salve onto the cut, Gruener’s jaw worked. He sat forward a little. “The question remains, what is your intention toward my daughter?”
That very question had haunted him all night. “To bring her safely home.”
It earned him only another swift and bitter glare from Kate’s pa. Her mama swung away and set the pot of salve next to her washbasin, then lifted the coffee pot to refill his cup.
Thomas gritted his teeth.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to say the words. And the knowledge that he’d already done the very thing he swore to Truth that he wouldn’t—to leave a woman behind to cry over him—the certainty of that, with Kate, took his breath away. God, forgive me…for all of this.
He drew a long breath and let it out slowly. Looked first at Kate’s mama and then her pa. Both worn and haggard in their grief. “I love your daughter,” he said at last. Something inside him broke open completely at the admission, and he had to swallow hard to keep going. “I—I’m not convinced I’m the man she needs, but if she’d have me, I’d be honored to have her as wife.”
Mrs. Gruener’s hands went to her mouth again, and Kate’s pa—his shoulders heaved, the blue eyes sheened, and he nodded sharply. “She’ll have you.”
Thomas hesitated. “You know this?”
Gruener shook his head, slowly at first, then more vigorously, and he rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “She’s been enamored of you for some time now. If you hadn’t noticed.”
His skin prickled with more than the morning heat, and he fought the urge to squirm. “I—noticed.” He sipped at his coffee, then frowned into the cup. “Regardless of what she decides, if it’s in my power to do so, I’ll bring her back.”
Three of the Indians were quarreling again. Kate crept behind a bush to tend her needs, and when she lingered too long, a tug came on the tether on her wrist. Her skin was already chafed bloody, but holding back a wince, she edged closer and stood as quietly as she could, head down, hands folded in her skirts. As their voices rose, harsher and louder, she shut her eyes.
If they slew each other, would she be able to find her way back to Thomas and her family? Would he be able to find her?
Abruptly, the arguing stopped. One sharp word from Crying Bird, who held her tether, then he and the other Shawnee hefted their packs and set off without the others, yanking her along.
“Where,” she panted, “are we going?”
“Enough talk,” he snarled.
Be brave.
She had to keep repeating the words to herself as the men set a blistering pace, dragging her up hills, across creeks, around canebrakes and mud flats. Sometimes she could hear Thomas’s voice clearly saying it, see the pale blue of his eyes, feel his rough, warm palm against her cheek—and others it sounded more like her own voice whimpering, Help, Lord.
If Thomas finding her again was dependent upon her staying on her feet, she did not know how she’d accomplish it.
It was nearly noon before Thomas could get away again, mounted this time on Ladyslipper. He tried to calculate how long it might take him to reach the Ohio River and find a place to cross, but with all that had taken place the last few days, he could not. Perhaps not more than three days. Almost certainly less than a week, even if it rained, which meant he might get there before any decisions were made about Kate.
He had Ladyslipper packed with the few things the Grueners were able to spare, with plans to stop off in Harrodsburg and purchase anything else that came to mind. He knew the Shawnee tended to generosity in their own gift-giving, and he wanted to do the same. Especially since at this point, Kate meant more to him than any material goods he might own.
And what if they demanded Ladyslipper as well?
The thought made his breath—and heartbeat—hitch. But this was Kate. He’d do the same for any of his sisters, and—
She was most definitely not his sister. She’d somehow become so much more.
The words he’d spoken to Karl and Jemima Gruener under duress came back to him in a rush. A trembling struck his limbs. Fortunately neither of them had pressed him to explain his comment about not being sure he was the right man for Kate. They’d shown him nothing but kindness since that conversation, insisting he sleep for a few hours, making sure he was fed and provisioned enough for the ride north. Sadness still rimmed their faces, but there was hope in their eyes as well, though faint enough.
He wasn’t at all sure he’d be able to find her, much less whether his plan would work or what would happen after. But he had to try. No one else had even the slightest idea where she might be.
“And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.”
Now, where had that come from?
“Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.”
That made no more sense than the first. It was—it was the words of Jesus, for heaven’s sake, not some directive about Kate—
“But Thomas, you do know the way. I have made you for this moment.”
And why did it matter? What were they, he and Kate, but two in the midst of countless others who had suffered hardship and loss. Why should God intervene for them?
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart…. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
There was so much he knew or thought he knew after years of sitting in church beside his family. Enduring long sermons, overloud and out-of-tune singing, frowns and disapproving looks when he’d fidget. Staring out the window and wishing he was there, running the hills. In the midst of it all, losses and separations that he’d seen break grown men and women who he’d considered strong.
And the religion of the Shawnee had at times seemed more real, more tangible—but even that had been without a certain hope he’d remembered his childhood elders speaking of—
So many times, Lord God, I’ve asked where You were, all these years. If You were with me. If You could even see me or had turned away. And now, in this, You mean me to know that You let it all happen so I would seek You?
Because now, here he was. He’d gotten his boyhood wish to run the hills, had spent years doing so, crisscrossing the wilderness until he knew it better than his own mother’s face. And to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, where both he and Kate were taken—but yet the right place at the right time, that he had a fair idea of where to start with looking for her.
Provided they hadn’t just gotten mad and tomahawked her. The very thought choked him, made it hard to breathe—especially the closer he got, as he’d retraced their trail to where he’d
left Kate with Crying Bird and the others.
The sun was lowering in the sky before he reached the spot. His heart hammered in his chest as he slid down from Ladyslipper.
No sign of Kate’s body, or even of any struggle. Naught that would point toward her not still being alive somewhere. Just an abandoned campsite, barely visible even to one who knew what to look for, and a trail leading away.
And the memory of her cheek under his palm, and her mouth against his—
For the second time that day, Thomas dropped to his knees, overcome. Deep breaths like gasps or sobs—he could not tell which—tore at his gut.
God—oh God, I did not realize until this moment how desperately I want her to be alive. Need her to be alive. Not just to be able to deliver her safely back to her family, but—Lord, is it wrong to just want her in my arms?
When had he gotten so attached to Miss Katarina Gruener anyway?
Ah Lord…
With a last, shuddering sigh, he got to his feet, cast a final glance about, then swung back into the saddle and set off again. It didn’t seem they were trying too hard to hide their trail at least.
Hours later as the sun was slipping below the horizon, he puzzled over it still.
He didn’t want to stop for the night, but with no moon until later, he’d lose the faint trail Crying Bird had left. On the other hand, he was bound to lose it sooner or later, once they hit the Ohio River and crossed, because unless he found a ferry, he’d no way to get Ladyslipper across without swimming and thus wetting all his goods. So it might be best to ride through the night, angle toward Lexington and northeast to a ferry, then work his way up the river and inquire about Kate as he went.
Or just head straight for the Shawnee town that had been his home for a while. Because at this point, it was his best guess that Crying Bird would take her back there. Especially after he’d run across sign that the party had split, with three braves going back south, and three—one of those with a smaller print—headed on north.
Crying Bird making sure Thomas would follow and return to the Shawnee?
The Cumberland Bride Page 17