Cherokee Storm

by Janelle Taylor

  “Try it and you’ll be singing soprano in church choir!” A nasty scum rose in her throat and she gagged. “I’ll never live with a murderer…a monster.”

  “Get a hold of yerself, you lunatic woman.” His bluster became a coward’s whine. “Only two of them scalps is kids. One was full-grown buck. Come at me with a war club. I’m lucky I even survived.”

  She took a step forward, still holding the knife, ready to strike. “What were you doing there? I heard the killers were from Virginia. How did you—”

  “They come through Green Valley lookin’ fer volunteers.”

  “And you went? What kind of man are you?”

  “Yer hysterical. Injun lover, just like yer pa. Can’t you see? It’s the only way. This country won’t be fit for Godfearin’ folk until we rid these mountains of them savages.”

  “You’re a fool, Drake. You’ve put every man, woman, and child in this valley in danger. If Split Cane’s people knew you were part of that raiding party, they’d wipe out this settlement.”

  “And who’s gonna tell?” he demanded. “Not you. Not my lovin’ wife, crazy as a Virginia politician!”

  He tried to grab her, and she slashed the blade across the back of his palm. Blood welled up. “Now you done it!” he roared. “Now I’m gonna—”

  Whatever Drake intended to threaten was lost in the crash of the cabin door. Damon burst in. “What the hell?” Drake’s twin was dressed for travel and had a long rifle in one hand.

  “Grab her, brother! She’s lost her mind!”

  “Stay out of this!” Shannon said.

  Damon stared from one to the other.

  “Grab her, damn it!” Drake repeated.

  Shannon glared at Damon. “Come near me, and I’ll give you the same.”

  Damon threw up his hands. “I’m not getting between a man and his bride on their wedding night.”

  “Then if you’re not going to help, get out!” Drake said.

  “Pa needs you. Captain Wormwood took out six men this morning to hunt fresh meat. They walked into an Injun ambush. The captain and four of the soldiers died. Massacred. Only one made it back to Fort Hood alive. Pa says we got to go back afore they hit here. Round up your livestock. We’re leaving in half an hour.”

  Drake looked at her. “Did you hear that? We gotta go. But don’t think I’ll forget this. You’re not gettin’ off without—”

  “I think you’re both crazy.” Damon leaned his rifle against the doorjamb. “You can fight anytime. Why you’d rather cut each other than make bacon on your wedding night puzzles me, but we’ve got to get out of here before we all end up like Captain Wormwood.”

  “I’m not going back to the fort,” Shannon said. “I’d rather take my chances with the Indians.”

  Drake swore. “Told ye she was crazy, didn’t I, brother?”

  “You go, if you’re scared,” she said. “I’m never setting foot in that fort again.”

  “You’re my wife. You’ll do what I say!”

  “Will I? How’s that working for you so far?”

  “Settle this,” Damon warned. “I’m getting back to Pa’s. If you stay, it’s your hair.”

  “I’d rather stay than go one step with a child killer. Did you know about those?” she asked Damon. “They’re scalps.” She pointed toward the hearth. “Or were you with him? Did you murder children too?”

  Damon scoffed. “Not me. I don’t like Injuns any better than the next white man, but I’m not about to risk my neck wandering around the mountains in the night. Drake did that all on his self. Pa wasn’t pleased about it, neither.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard out of your pa.” She moved so that her back was to the wall, but kept her gaze on Drake. “You can tell him that this marriage is over.”

  “What? Ye think anybody would give ye a dee’vorce over some damned Injun scalps?” Drake asked incredulously. “Now I know you’re cracked. May as well lock you in the madhouse with the rest of the loonies.”

  “Divorce, annulment, I don’t care what you call it. I doubt if our so-called marriage is legal anyway. You run back to the fort with your family. I mean to go home to my father.”

  “Small chance of that,” Drake said. “It’s three days over the mountains. If the savages don’t get you, the wolves and panthers will.”

  “Flynn didn’t sound much like he wanted you,” Damon put in. “You’d best lower your hackles and come with us.”

  “My father didn’t know what you’d done. We were there that night; did you know that, Drake? You killed his friends. You could have killed him or me. I know he would have killed you if he’d gotten you in his rifle sights.”

  Drake gathered up his boots and yanked them on over his bare feet. “Leave her,” he said to his brother. “She’ll change her tune once she sees us movin’ out.”

  “Will I?” she said. “Wait and see. I’ll shoot you myself before I lie down in your bed.”

  “You’re bound to leave him, then,” Damon asked.

  “I am. And God help anybody who tries to take me by force.”

  Damon shook his head. “All right. I can see you’re whipped up something fierce. Tell you what. You stay here in the valley, we’ll go. If you bide here until we get back from the fort and Injuns don’t massacre you—if you still want to be shut of him, I’ll see you home to your pa.”

  “The hell you will,” Drake said. He took down his rifle and grabbed his vest. “Don’t come cryin’ to me, bitch, if you end up dead.”

  Damon touched his forelock in salute. “Gotta admire you, Shannon O’Shea. You do know how to pitch a temper.”

  Drake sucked at the cut on his hand. “You’ll be sorry for this,” he promised.

  “I’ll wait here for you,” she said to Damon, “but I won’t change my mind. It was a mistake for me to marry him in the first place. No matter what happens, it can’t be worse than sleeping with a murderer.”

  Shannon didn’t sleep at all that night. Instead, she’d sat by the hearth, a rifle by her feet. Whether she dreaded Drake’s return or an Indian attack more, she didn’t know. Finally, at dawn, Betty’s loud bawling drew her from the cabin, bucket in one hand, loaded rifle in another.

  Damon had left her his own rifle, assuring her that his father would lend him one of his. Drake had tried to talk him out of it, and Shannon remembered his final words. “Whatever happens is on her own head. Let the Injuns have her. She’s no good to me.”

  The rain had stopped, and the world seemed new and fresh as Shannon walked to the pound where the cow stood by the gate. Drake had taken his horses, and he’d driven off his cattle. Only Betty and the big-headed pony remained. Badger raised his head and nickered as he saw her coming.

  Shannon wished Drake had taken the cow but was glad he’d left her pony. Betty had to be milked morning and night or she’d become sick. Shannon wondered what she’d do with gallons of milk and no one else to use it. It seemed such a waste when she knew that the settlers’ children would be hungry inside the fort walls. They’d be lucky if none of them caught typhus or the pox. Stuffing so many people in a small space without clean water and a place to dispose of waste was a recipe for disaster. She’d seen far too much of that at the children’s home.

  She leaned her rifle against the fence and went to the shed for grain. Both the pony and cow could use a good meal. There was grass in the pound, but not much, and the horses and cattle had churned that to a muddy stew last night.

  The little cabin stood proudly in the center of a clearing. Off to the left, Drake had cleared land to put in a crop, but charred tree stumps remained scattered across the field. The other homesteads were far enough away that Shannon couldn’t see them. If the neighbors had remained in the valley, she supposed smoke from their chimneys would have been visible, but this morning, the sky was clear and robin’s egg blue.

  She liked the solitude. As she milked the cow, dodging swishes of Betty’s manure-caked tail and the occasional kick, she revel
ed in the sounds of birdsong and bees. A bluebird lit on a fence post and preened jewel-like feathers while a wren chattered away from the tree beside the house. She thought she could have been happy here, if it weren’t for Drake. But now, any marriage with him was impossible.

  She’d unknowingly married a murderer.

  Not married, she told herself. There had been no priest, no mention of God. The fort commander had simply listed their names and ages and personal information on a sheet torn from a ledger and declared them husband and wife. The paper was in her apron pocket still.

  Shannon stood up and set the bucket aside. She stepped far enough from the cow to keep the wicked animal from kicking over the milk, and removed her marriage lines from her pocket. Betty stretched out her neck, bared yellow teeth, and tried to snatch the paper from her hands.

  Nathanial Drake Clark, farmer, born 1730, Virginia Colony, freeman, states his intention to take to wife one Mary Shannon O’Shea, freewoman, late of Baltimore, Maryland Colony, daughter of Flynn O’Shea.

  Tears blurred her eyes as she scanned the date and the commandant’s rank and signature. This wasn’t a marriage license. It was a bill of sale. She might as well have been a cow.

  Betty leaned back on the rope that held her to the fence and swished her tail. Her bulging eyes rolled in her head as she tried desperately to reach the creased page in Shannon’s hand.

  “You want this?” Shannon asked. “Have it.” She fed the cow the paper and watched with satisfaction as Betty chewed and swallowed the entire thing.

  Shannon tried to keep busy through the day. She hobbled both the cow and the pony to keep them from wandering too far and turned them loose to graze. She swept and scrubbed the cabin floor, strained the milk through clean linen and poured it into a flat pan to let the cream rise.

  She hoed the garden, pulled a few greens and turnips, and set Johnny cake to bake in a Dutch oven on the hearth. Then she drew enough water from the well to wash her clothes. After she’d hung the garments to dry on nearby bushes, she carried more water and heated it for a bath.

  She washed her hair and scrubbed herself from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, scrubbing off every trace of Drake Clark and the filthy English fort. She doubted that hostiles would attack Green Valley, but if they did—if they killed her—she intended to stand clean at the golden gates of heaven.

  When the cream rose by late afternoon, Shannon carefully skimmed it off and put it in a deep bowl. The remaining milk she poured into a crock and lowered into the well in a bucket. It was cool in the well, and the milk would keep for days. She washed her new butter churn, dumped in the cream, and made a fine batch of yellow butter to eat with her bread and greens.

  Where was Storm Dancer this evening? she wondered. Were he and his new wife bathing in some mountain stream, or had they crept away to make love on a secluded bed of moss? Losing him was bitter. She knew they said that they couldn’t be together, that the night they’d shared was just that. But she had never dreamed how much it would hurt to give him up. Just thinking about him made her teary-eyed.

  Resolutely, she tied her drying hair back, picked up the rifle, and went to look for the cow and pony. Betty, she found just beyond the pound fence, nibbling grass. Her bag seemed full, and she was mooing to be milked, so once again, Shannon fetched the bucket and tended to the animal’s needs.

  But this time, just as Shannon finished milking, a rabbit hopped across the grass. The cow shied, kicked over the milk, and yanked her tether free from the fence post. Before Shannon could grab the trailing rope, Betty was out the gate and trotting through the gathering dust toward the garden.

  Shannon dashed after the cow, but there was no catching her. The contrary beast kicked up her heels and ran off across the field toward the far woods. “Suit yourself!” Shannon shouted. “Be eaten by bears! See if I care!”

  The pony was nowhere in sight. Shannon hadn’t thought the animal would stray far from the cow, but Badger was as mischievous as Betty. The sun had already dropped below the horizon, and it would be dark soon. Shannon wasn’t afraid of staying alone in the cabin, but she didn’t relish the thought of roaming the forest at night in search of stray livestock.

  Summer days are long in the Smoky Mountains, but night falls quickly, after sunset. And all too soon, shadows closed around the cabin. Shannon retreated to the stout walls, barred the door, and put on a kettle of water to brew tea.

  She was tired. She’d worked hard all day; she’d had no sleep the night before, and little the last nights before that. She was nervous, but too exhausted to think of sitting up tonight. She would keep the rifle close beside the pallet, but she would sleep. And tomorrow, she’d hunt down the pony. If Damon didn’t return in a few days, she’d set out on her own. She didn’t want to drag Betty along if she didn’t have to, but leaving the hateful cow with no one to milk her would tug at her conscience.

  The only light in the cabin was the glow from the banked coals. She wasn’t so wasteful as to go to bed with a candle burning. Candles, especially good wax ones such as Drake’s, were expensive. She wanted no part of him, but she wouldn’t take what wasn’t hers to take. Her muscles ached as she stretched out on the mattress. It had been a long time since she’d worked this hard. Quickly, she dropped off to sleep.

  She didn’t know what awakened her. She sat upright and listened. From the direction of the pound came the howl of a wolf. Shannon shivered and instantly, she thought of the pony and Betty. They were out there, unprotected.

  She wondered if she should light a torch and take a look. Badger or the cow might be standing outside the cabin door. If he was, she could lead him inside. It would serve Drake right to have pony or cow tracks on his new floor. But the cabin had no window. There was only the one entrance and a small slide to peep through to see who was at the door. The chances were, she’d see nothing but blackness.

  She rose from the pallet, put on her shift, and went to look outside. Nothing. “Badger? Are you out there?” She went back for the rifle. What would it hurt to open the door and—

  Another wolf howled, this time from the direction of the garden. Was it the same wolf or another one? She took a torch from the wall, lit it, and crept to the door.

  More howling. A chill went through her. A pack of wolves. What could she do with one shot against a pack? But if the pony had come back to the house for help, how could she leave him to be eaten alive? She would have to look, at least.

  Summoning her courage, whispering a prayer under her breath, she slid back the bolt and threw open the door. She raised the torch, and then screamed as a flaming arrow thrummed past her head and slammed into the cabin wall, inches from her face.

  Chapter 18

  Not wolves! Hostiles! Shannon ducked back inside and slammed the door. She threw her weight against it and dropped the metal bar in place. Her heart hammered against her ribs. How could she defend the cabin alone? How many Indians were out there? Were they Cherokee or some other tribe?

  She forced herself to slow her breathing. Panic would do nothing but get her killed. The door was the only way in. If she made it difficult enough for the raiding party to break through the door, they might move on to another house.

  The other cabins should be empty. She was certain most or all of the settlers had returned to Fort Hood with the Clarks. If the Indians had come to loot, there were easier pickings at one of the other homesteads.

  Why hadn’t she gone to safety with the others? Why had she been so stupid as to open the door? For a cow that was probably roasting over an Indian campfire? For a thick-headed pony?

  Now the war party knew she was in here. Her carelessness had nearly cost her life. The stink of a lock of scorched hair that hung over her eyes was proof of that. Two inches closer, and she wouldn’t have known what hit her. She shuddered at the thought of the flaming arrow piercing her temple. But she couldn’t waste what time she had worrying over what she’d done wrong. She had to think of what to do now, if she had an
y chance of living through this. “Da,” she whispered, “I wish you were here to tell me what to do.”

  The door was stout; the metal bar secured with solid oak, but determined men could break it down. She threw kindling on the coals and flames ignited the dry wood, illuminating the single room. She ran to the table, pushed it over, and dragged it to block the entrance. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t surrender. She’d fight to her last breath. But the tiny cabin left few choices for defense. Where could she hide?

  Howls rose from outside. Not two shrieking warriors, but ten, twenty. The shrill cries turned her blood to ice. She was going to die here. She was going to die with her sins weighing heavy on her soul…and she was going straight to hell without ever feeling Storm Dancer’s arms around her again.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” she prayed. “Be with me now in my hour of—”

  Shannon jumped back as something heavy struck the door. Again! The wood splintered, and a tip of silver metal appeared in the crack. An ax! They were chopping the door down. Frantically, she scanned the room.

  Along one wall, steps had been cut in the logs to form a stairway leading up to the half-loft. Better there than standing here when the Indians broke in, she thought. Clutching the rifle, shot bag, and powder horn, she scrambled up the ladder. There were no furnishings in the shadowy loft, but an oxen yoke lay on the floor. She dragged it over to use as a brace for the rifle, and dropped flat on her stomach.

  The ax struck the door again and again, the blade biting into the wood. It couldn’t be an Indian tomahawk. That was hard steel hacking at the oak boards. With a sinking heart, she remembered seeing Drake’s ax driven into a stump at the woodpile beside the open shed. Idiot! If he hadn’t the sense to bring the ax inside, why hadn’t she?

  A chunk of wood flew inward and clattered across the floor. A painted face appeared in the jagged opening. Shannon didn’t think. She took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The long rifle boomed. The shock of the explosion threw her back, but her bullet flew straight and true.