Cherokee Storm

by Janelle Taylor

  One agonized shriek rang out. The face was gone.

  “Father forgive me,” she murmured. Had she killed a man? Her pulse raced, and she clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.

  Bellows of fury reverberated from outside! More blows hammered the door. It was only a matter of time and the attackers would break through. Automatically, she removed the lid from the powder flask with her teeth, raised the rifle and dumped the right amount of powder into the barrel. She could hear her father’s voice in her head.

  “Slow now, slow and easy. Too much and you’ll blow your head off. Too little, and your ball won’t carry to your target.”

  “I hear you, Da.” Her fingers felt as though they were made of wood as she fumbled for the patch and covered the end of the barrel with it.

  “Aye, girl, that’s right.” Da’s calm words echoed from the past. Time seemed to stand still, and she could remember the day he’d taught her how to load the long rifle perfectly. “Now, darlin’, seat your patch and ram it home.”

  With trembling hands she used the iron ramrod to shove ball and patch down the barrel. With trembling hands, she measured fine black powder into the frizzen pan. She rested the rifle barrel on the oxen yoke and pulled back the hammer.

  She held her breath, waiting for another eye to peer in through the hole. And when she saw movement, she fired again. Another shriek split the air, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body falling heavily against the door.

  Scuffling, then silence.

  She swallowed hard and began the process of reloading the rifle. “What do you think, Da?” she whispered into the empty loft. “Will they line up single file so I can mow them down, one by one, like birds at a turkey shoot?” She didn’t think that was going to happen.

  She waited.

  Minutes passed. Had they given up, taken their dead or injured, and gone away? It was an optimistic thought, but she didn’t believe that either. She was sorry that she had only the one rifle. She could load in a hurry, but she couldn’t load fast enough to hold back a full-scale attack. If the war party came through the door, she might kill another brave, but no more than one. If they came in after her, she would be lucky to die quickly.

  The kindling burned low, dimming the light in the room below. The smell of smoke rose to the loft. Odd, the fire didn’t seem to be that smoky, but…Shannon clenched her teeth and stifled a tiny moan. The fire wasn’t on the hearth; the scent of smoke was coming from outside.

  The Indians had set fire to the cabin.

  If she didn’t go out, she would burn to death. And if she surrendered, they would give her no mercy. She’d be tortured, maybe raped, before they cut her to pieces or tied her to a stake and burned her anyway.

  “Madame!” a man called out in heavily accented English. “Come out. I promise to protect you.”

  A Frenchman. Could she trust him or was this a trick? She didn’t want to die here, but every instinct told her that opening that door a second time would be just as wrong a move as the first.

  “Madame!”

  If he was French, who were his allies? Shawnee? Huron? Cherokee? If they were Cherokee, they might let her live for Flynn’s sake. But they couldn’t be Cherokee, could they? Unless the Cherokee had learned that Drake had been with the cowards who had attacked the Cherokee villages. And if they were Cherokee and she was in Drake Clark’s house, she would suffer the same fate as he would when they caught up with him.

  Shannon rose onto her knees. If the Frenchman was telling the truth, he might take her north. She could be exchanged for French captives. That happened sometimes. She’d killed at least one of the Indians. All Indians admired courage. They might let her live…might even adopt her into the tribe. Anything would be better than dying, wouldn’t it?

  A crackling sound came from the far end of the loft. It was dark back there. She couldn’t see the smoke, but she could smell it. The log walls were afire. Smoke began to seep under the door and curl upward. The smoke would rise. She would die of smoke inhalation long before the flames reached her. It was the first cheerful thought she’d had since the arrow had nearly missed her head.

  “Madame.” The voice seemed farther away now, less certain.

  Shannon coughed. Whatever else, it was time to pray.

  “I can still save you,” the Frenchman said.

  Yes, she thought, there’s still a chance I can live. She got to her feet. She’d surrender. That was the sensible thing to do. Surrender, and hope for the best.

  But as she started for the ladder, she could have sworn she heard, not her father’s voice in her head, but Storm Dancer’s. His words were not in English, but in Cherokee.

  “Do not go out. If you do, you will die.”

  She shook her head. Impossible that she would hear Storm Dancer. Impossible that she would understand his native tongue. But his warning stirred doubt, and she stopped short. She’d been a fool earlier. Was she making a worse mistake now?

  French officers were known for ignoring the cruel behavior of their Indian allies, and sometimes, they were known for participating in the worst of the torture. Would the death waiting outside be even more horrible than dying here with a gun in her hand?

  What would Flynn O’Shea do?

  The answer came as easily as her father’s smile.

  “Go to hell,” she whispered as she returned to her defensive position on the edge of the loft and leveled the rifle. “Show your face in that doorway and I’ll send you there ahead of me.”

  Captain Yves De Loup turned away from the burning cabin and shrugged. “We’ve wasted enough time on one woman,” he said to his translator. “Tell them to fire the roof.”

  The brave repeated the Frenchman’s words in Shawnee. After several shouts and a rash of defiant grumbling, one older warrior sent a fire arrow flying. Another man followed suit, and soon the cedar shingles were ablaze.

  “Maybe she will come out,” the translator said.

  “She will not come out,” De Loup answered brusquely. He gathered his reins and swung up into the saddle. “There are other cabins in this valley. Ask them if they will stay here like old women cackling or come with me and prove their courage against men?”

  He was glad the woman had not surrendered. He had no time for prisoners, and he would not have risked the ire of the Shawnee war party to save her. This way was better. The woman was just as dead and would set an example for other English settlers, but he didn’t have to witness her dying. He didn’t like killing civilians, especially women. He had a young wife at home. But orders were orders, and dealing with Indians was not like giving orders to civilized French soldiers.

  The Shawnee followed. One man carried the Englishman’s ax over his shoulder, and others carried their two dead comrades. By the time he’d ridden across the cultivated field and entered the forest road, the cabin was fully engulfed. It was a pity, really. What he’d seen of the woman had looked attractive. She’d been a blonde, and he’d always been fond of yellow-haired women.

  Storm Dancer was afraid that the boys guarding the horses had been ambushed as well, but he found them at their posts, sleepy, awake, and unharmed. It might have gone so differently. If Winter Fox, Flint, and the other delegates had been sleeping in the blankets by the fire, they would be dead instead of the French Colonel Gervais, five French soldiers, and more than a score of their Shawnee allies. Instead, the quarry had become the hunters. When the enemy war party struck the camp, they had found only empty blankets stuffed with branches and the Tsalagi at their backs.

  Those of the Shawnee who survived the initial fight had fled into the forest. Winter Fox had ordered the Tsalagi warriors not to follow. There would be other days to fight the Shawnee. What was important was that the council members return home alive to their respective towns to report the French treachery.

  The French Colonel Gervais had called a parley and then tried to murder them. And if Gall’s father, Luce Pascal, was not in on the plot, he had turned a blind eye. T
he trader was now as much of an enemy as the Shawnee, and he would find that the Cherokee had long memories.

  There was no more honor to be found among the French than among the English. The Frenchman Gervais had paid for his perfidy with his life. Winter Fox had met the colonel before in the north and recognized not only his face but the silver gorget that Storm Dancer had taken off his body.

  Storm Dancer had come to the conclusion that neither the French nor the English could be trusted. The words and the treaties of white men were useless. It was clear that the Cherokee must learn to smile and shake hands with the foreigners but believe nothing they said. The Tsalagi must watch and learn their ways and use it against them.

  Oona had warned him never to return to Truth Teller’s trading post, but Storm Dancer felt he owed his old friend a warning. The fires of war blazed hot. It was no longer safe to be a lone white man on the edge of Cherokee land. Often men had accused Storm Dancer of being a hothead, of seeking war with the English, but others were far more eager than he to drive all the whites out of Indian land. Blood would flow and men on all sides would die. If he could save Shannon’s father and his Delaware wife, he would.

  More importantly, he must learn if Shannon was safe. Truth Teller must tell him where Shannon’s new husband had taken her. That she had chosen another man cut deep, but he could not stand aside and let harm come to her. So long as he drew breath, he would love her.

  He would warn her and her man as well. She still held his heart, what was left of it, and he could not bear to think of her in danger. It would be better if her husband took her back East where the Shawnee did not prowl the night and Tsalagi children wept for their dead mothers.

  For now, he could do nothing. He had to see his uncle, his father, and the rest of the delegation safely back to their home villages before he could go to Truth Teller’s trading post. Duty came before personal desire for a warrior of the Tsalagi. He pushed back the growing uneasiness. Worrying about Shannon wouldn’t change her fate. He must fulfill his mission and then ride hard for her father’s post.

  If harm came to her, the sun would no longer warm him. Water would no longer quench his thirst. He would paint his face and take up the blood tomahawk. He would hunt down the enemy until he drew his last breath.

  The ripple of smoke under the cabin door became a cloud. Above, the roof shingles popped and hissed. The cabin below was quickly filling with black, choking smoke. Shannon coughed. Soon it would be impossible to breathe. She wondered how long it would take her to die without air.

  She scanned the room below in search of some way to survive the fire. And then she saw it! Where the table had stood, the floorboards ran a different direction. How had she been so stupid?

  There was a trapdoor leading to a root cellar. Drake had bragged to her father about the cellar beneath his house. Taking the rifle, shot bag, and powder horn, she climbed down the ladder and ran to the hatch. It was much harder to breathe here, and she began to choke. Her eyes stung and ran with tears. But she found the loop of leather that served as a handle, yanked it up, and took a deep gulp of the fresh air rushing up from the rock hollow below.

  There was no time to hunt for a candle. She half slid, half jumped into the darkness below. The hatchway dropped shut over her head, leaving her in total darkness. She stifled a scream. The floor was farther away than she’d thought, and she fell sideways when she hit bottom. The rifle jolted out of her hand and she stuck her head against the hard-packed dirt.

  Half-dazed, she sat up. Faint lines of light showed over her head. The crackle of fire had become a roar. Shannon reached out, blindly trying to find her way. It was becoming hotter. If the floor above burned, she’d be caught in the falling timbers.

  Too dizzy to stand, she began to crawl. One hand brushed the cold steel of the rifle barrel, and she caught it and dragged it along with her. Abruptly, wall of rock blocked her passage. She nearly panicked, but then realized that the air on her face was still musty and earth-smelling but fresh.

  The cellar must extend beyond the walls of the house.

  She kept moving forward, keeping her face close to the ground. Suddenly, she realized that she could touch both sides of what must be a passageway. The wall here was crumbling dirt interlaced with what she guessed were tree roots. She couldn’t guess why there would be a tunnel leading away from the house, but it was cooler here, so she kept creeping and dragging the rifle behind her.

  The sound of the crackling logs and roaring fire receded. Her head hurt, and she stopped to rest. She knew she must move, that she wasn’t far enough from the fire, but she was so weary. She would catch her wind and then go on. Her eyes closed, and her body went limp.

  Later, she had no idea how much later, she awoke with a start. For an instant, she thought she must be dreaming. She could smell smoke, but she couldn’t hear a sound. She thrust out a hand, hit a dirt wall, and cried out. Was she dead and in her grave?

  “Holy Mary,” she began praying softly.

  Her prayer was answered almost immediately by a horse’s whinny. No, not a horse, a very familiar pony. Badger! She couldn’t be dead if that rascal was nearby. She got to her feet and stumbled down the passage toward the source of the sound…

  …And crashed full-tilt into a wooden door.

  Shaken, she pushed against the hand-hewn boards. Something was holding the door from the outside. She grabbed up the rifle, wiggled it until she held the barrel, and then slammed the butt against the wood.

  The door burst open and Shannon flung herself out onto the rain. When she looked around, the first thing she saw was the remains of the cabin, three blackened walls and a stone chimney silhouetted against fire-scorched trees. She was perhaps thirty feet away, just beyond the woodpile. The outer entrance to the cellar was low, hardly tall enough for a man to stand upright, set into a mound of earth and nearly concealed by flowering shrubs.

  There were no Indians, no remains of a roasted cow. Smoke still rose in waves from sodden ashes. The only signs of life were the pair of wrens in the walnut tree and the big-headed pony standing not six feet away from her and watching with white-rimmed eyes.

  The rope she’d hobbled the animal with was still trailing from one leg. Cautiously, she moved close enough to grab the rope, looped it around his neck, and then untied it from his right foreleg.

  No war party.

  She was alive.

  Shannon began to laugh. She flung her arms around the pony’s neck and dissolved into great sobbing tears. Once she’d had her cry, she wiped her eyes and tried to decide what was the wisest thing to do.

  She had a mount, a gun, and the means to use it. Somewhere in her panic, she’d lost the powder horn, and she had to gather her courage to crawl back into the tunnel and bring it out. Luckily, none of the precious black powder had been lost. Her shot bag was half-full, and nestled in the bottom was flint and steel for fire-making. If she could catch a fish or shoot a squirrel, she wouldn’t have to eat it raw.

  In the cellar had been barrels of supplies, but they had been destroyed in the conflagration. She was on her own. She knew the way to Fort Hood. That was only hours away, but she had no intention of going to Drake. Now that she had lost Storm Dancer forever, there was only one place she wanted to be.

  Shannon fashioned a crude bridle out of the pony’s rope, tied it around his head, and climbed up on him bareback. Her father’s trading post lay three days to the west through the mountains. Hostile Indians, flooded rivers, and wild animals couldn’t keep her from him. She was going home.

  Chapter 19

  The problem with making the journey from Green Valley to the trading post on her own was that there were no roads, not even a trail, and Shannon had never traveled the route. When she’d last left home, she’d ridden northwest to Fort Hood. Da’s post was south and west, and she had to follow the valleys and passes.

  Going directly over the mountains on horseback wasn’t possible, at least not for her. The way was too steep and rocky. She
could easily get turned around and end up back in Green Valley or totally lost.

  The first day, she traveled on nerve and high spirits. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty, and she was eager to get as far from the burned cabin as possible. She wasn’t certain the hostiles had left the valley, and if they had, she didn’t want to be there when Drake and the other settlers returned. She wasn’t waiting for Damon to guide her home. She’d find her own way. At least, she hoped she would.

  That night, she was lucky enough to find a small hollow in a rock outcrop that faced south. There was a spring nearby, and a ripe blackberry patch that she feasted on until her hands were stained with juice and her stomach stopped growling. The nook wasn’t deep enough to be called a cave, but the depression had three walls, and an overhanging tree that she could convince herself was a roof. The crevice gave her a feeling of security.

  She tied the pony securely to a tree. He hadn’t grazed, but she couldn’t take the chance that he would escape in the night and leave her on foot. On the far side of the spring were a few ripe elderberries and a plant her mother had called yellow dock. The leaves were edible raw and not bad tasting.

  It was the wrong time of year for nuts, but she did find a cluster of tiny white mushrooms. Oona had regularly served mushrooms with their meals, but Shannon wasn’t certain enough of the variety to eat these. Some mushrooms were deadly poison, and some of the good ones and bad ones looked much the same. How she wished she’d paid more attention to Oona’s advice.

  Shannon hadn’t expected to sleep that night, alone without so much as a blanket, but she dropped instantly into a deep and dreamless slumber. When she awakened to Badger’s snorting and the stamp of his hooves, light was already breaking over the treetops. She was stiff and sore, but felt proud of herself. She’d survived one day and night, found food, and hadn’t been eaten by any wild creature.