by Shirl Henke
“Then you believe the Osage may choose to fight against the Americans,” Johnstone said.
“I will do what I can to stop it.” He smiled sadly. “Not because I believe the father in Washington is better than the father king across the great ocean. But your great chief is closer and it is his children who will remain after the war is fought, not the English.”
Micajah digested all that the wily old man had told him...and what he had not told him. Since Pawhuska had spoken plainly, he decided to follow suit. “Why do you tell me this, my friend? I am not a bluecoat. I have no part in the white men’s wars.”
“I wish you to take the Long Knife Shelby away from our village. He is sick and unable to speak for himself before the council. I fear for his safety when the Englishman comes and I would not see him harmed.”
So that was the way the wind blew. Micajah knew the Osage put great store in spit and polish. Shelby had probably arrived last summer dressed in his best blues, but now he had reappeared in rags, feverish and wandering in the wilderness, perhaps chased by the very English agent who was coming to speak before the Osage council of elders.
Johnstone cleared his throat. “I can see your point. He would make a poor showing against his foe right now and those hotheads who want to join the English might just carry the day, if they knew who he was.” And they might well kill Shelby as well as him and Sparky, since they too were Americans. “We will take him to safety. Can you prevent your daughter from telling anyone else about Shelby’s identity?”
The old man simply looked at him.
“Good.”
The two men rose and bowed to each other gravely and Micajah took his leave. There was much to prepare and little time in which to do it.
By dawn the next day they were ready to set out. Micajah had rigged a travois to a stout packhorse which was a gift from Pawhuska. On it they carried Samuel while their own horses were laden with their booty from the buffalo hunt. No one but old White Hair and his daughter Meadow Dancer knew that their unconscious passenger was an emissary of the great father in Washington. With luck, it would stay that way.
Chapter Fourteen
Samuel felt as if he were on fire, thrashing and rolling to escape the flames that seared his body. Someone must be prodding him with a burning firebrand. Osage torture? He struggled to open his eyes and focus on his tormentor, but emerging from the blackness was impossible. Then he felt a small cool hand touch him softly, pressing him back down, a low naggingly familiar voice speaking French endearments. A woman’s voice. Not his mother, nor Liza. Certainly not Tish. Who? Then blessed oblivion claimed him again and he drifted.
Olivia felt tears sting her eyes as she held him in her arms lest his fevered thrashing tear open the healing stitches in his side. He was in such awful pain. She could still feel the pressure of the needle puncturing his skin, the pull of the thread as it drew the ragged sides of the wound back together. What it had cost her to stitch his living flesh was beyond imagining.
Thank God, he had remained unconscious most of the time. When she was half-finished, he had awakened and Micajah had restrained him, holding his body still so she could complete the task. At least that boded well for his coming out of the head injury, and blessedly, he had quickly fainted once more.
Micajah had assured her he was too feverish to really be awake and would remember nothing of the pain when he recovered, but she had been white and shaking after forcing herself to complete the task. She waited until he lay very still once more, then continued peeling away the poultice adhering to the wound. The redness and pussy swelling were gone.
“Micajah’s strange ideas really do work,” she murmured to herself as she cleaned the healing slash with compresses of warm water, then applied fresh herbs to the area.
She had been dubious when Johnstone had gone to the river and brought back a jar filled with an evil slimy gray substance, saying that it was a certain cure for infections. She had been horrified when he had explained that it was frog eggs.
“This won’t cure him—it’ll give him warts!” she had shrieked.
Micajah had laughed. “Nope. They’s somethin’ in ‘em thet kills th’ pizen. Don’t rightly know whut, but my ma’s folks brung hit along from the old country hunerts of years ago.”
She had watched doubtfully as he packed the goo around the wound, but the next morning her fears turned to amazement when the fiery red swelling was nearly gone. Now the stitches were drawing tightly together, almost knit and ready to be removed. If only he would regain consciousness.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she shook her head, trying to dislodge the searing visions from his feverish ravings. He had called out for his sister and his father, but then came the awful revelations...
"Maman...Maman." His voice had been so hoarse and soft she could barely make it out at first. As she had leaned closer attempting to soothe him with cool washcloths pressed to his feverish skin, he rambled on. "Why did you go away, Maman? You broke Papa’s heart. How could you take Liza and leave me behind?"
Her heart wrenched at the little boy wistfulness in his voice as he talked about his first Christmas as a thirteen-year-old alone with a taciturn bereaved father in a big empty house. But if that betrayal cut to the quick, it paled by comparison to the next shocking revelation.
“I know you’re disappointed in me, Tish, but I’m a soldier...not presidential material. Hell, I won’t even make general. You married the wrong man...tried to make you understand…”
The words about his mother had touched her deeply but this, this was his wife, far too personal and painful for her to hear. She arose to leave the cabin and call Micajah to take over but before she could reach the door, he thrashed restlessly, kicking off the covers and his voice rose. She rushed back to his side.
“You bitch! You bloody bitch. You killed my child! May Wretz is an abortionist...can’t lie to me. I know you went to her while I was away. Did you kill the first child, too...that tragic miscarriage you suffered when we were first married...you swore you couldn’t bear to carry another babe and lose it...kept your word, Tish...you kept...your...word...”
His voice had faded as he dropped off into deeper unconsciousness. Trembling, Olivia had finished sponging him, then carefully replaced the covers and kept her bedside vigil until Micajah returned.
Now she understood the reason Samuel Shelby was such an embittered misogynist. He had hated his dead wife bitterly, and he mistrusted all women except his sister.
He will never love you.
Olivia trembled when the thought suddenly flashed into her mind. Fool, she berated herself, then added, As if I loved him!
Looking down, she took a deep breath and finished packing the herbs against the healing sutures before picking up the clean strips of linen to rebandage the wound. She leaned across his chest and reached over to begin wrapping the bandage when suddenly she sensed his eyes on her. At very close range, Olivia looked into Samuel’s harsh blue gaze.
He was speechless, as much from amazement as from the parched rawness of his throat. “I’ll be damned,” he finally rasped, “I wasn’t hallucinating about the Osage princess.”
His eyes swept over her as she sat bolt-upright on the edge of the big bed where he lay. She no longer wore the exotic beaded buckskin dress, but she scarcely looked like any conventional white female either. Her hair was bound in a single fat braid that lay across one shoulder, tied with a rawhide thong decorated with an eagle feather. She wore an age softened buckskin shirt, open at the throat, revealing an enticing patch of sun-gilded skin. Her nose was dusted with small gold freckles and that glorious red hair was streaked with bits of deep amber as if she had spent long hours in the hot sun.
Olivia watched him survey her, certain that he found her most unfeminine and repugnant in the comfortable and practical britches and shirt she had cut down from a set of Micajah’ s far larger garments. “I’m hardly a princess, but my father was the son of a baron,” she replied with all the self-poss
ession she could muster. I don’t care a fig what he thinks of me.
He felt a fiery stab of pain when he started to move, then reached over to clutch his left side, but she quickly grabbed his hand.
“Don’t. You might tear open the wound. I was just changing the dressing.” She lifted the bandage by way of explanation as he lay his right arm back on the mattress.
“Where am I?” he asked, looking around the interior of a small cabin, obviously not an Osage lodge.
The walls were made of whole logs, laid horizontally with tight mud and straw chinking between them, sealing out the weather. The floor was packed earth, hardened and polished to a dark maroon shine by “curing” it with buffalo blood, a trick he’d seen in numerous Indian villages along the Santa Fe trail. The only furniture consisted of a sturdy puncheon log table and four chairs, along with two plank shelves stretching across one wall, stocked with supplies and cooking implements.
A big limestone fireplace filled one wall. A low bank of coals glowed in it and a heavy iron kettle hung over them, giving off a spicy fragrance that made his stomach growl. Several rifles and an old musket hung on the opposite wall, along with an Osage war lance, a tomahawk and several gleaming knives, all decorated with shells and feathers. Two rather large windows let in golden sunlight and amazingly he could see the bright blooms of fall flowers peeping over the window sill.
“You’re in our cabin,” she replied matter-of-factly, as she resumed bandaging his chest. Let him ask.
“Our cabin?” He felt poleaxed. What was this helpless European aristocrat doing garbed in buckskins, living in a settler’s cabin in the wilderness...somewhere?
“Actually Micajah built it. Micajah Johnstone,” she replied as if that explained everything.
“And who the hell is Micajah Johnstone?” he asked with rising irritation. Your new lover?
“Raise up carefully so I can slide the wrapping under you,” she instructed, reaching across his broad chest, trying unsuccessfully to remain unaffected by his male scent and body heat. “Micajah is a mountain man or woodsman...sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“What I mean is, Micajah has spent years here living at peace with the various Indian tribes and white trappers, but he doesn’t trap for a living.”
“Has he a rich family back east who sends him money?” Samuel asked cynically. Already he was beginning to dislike this Johnstone fellow.
“Don’t be absurd. We grow our own corn and vegetables, hunt for meat and hides. We even have a bee tree,” she added with pride. “Nature provides.”
“We?”
“Is there an echo in here? Strange, I never noticed it before,” she added serenely, proud of her steady hand on the wrapping. “I live here, too. He saved my life after you abandoned me on the Missouri.”
“I did not abandon you. I left you in Manuel Lisa’s care.”
“Well, I didn’t choose to remain in his care,” she snapped back. “I left on my own.”
“I can imagine you didn’t get very far,” he said dryly, grateful she had not been killed or taken captive by hostiles.
“Oh, I managed for three days,” she exaggerated, “until I ran afoul of a she-bear with cubs.” Olivia was rewarded when a look of horror flashed across his face. She was strangely pleased. “That’s when Micajah saved my life. I’ve lived here ever since—except for when we’re off on a hunt or trading in the Osage villages. It’s lucky for you we were in Pawhuska’s town when you straggled in. If Micajah and I hadn’t brought you here, they’d probably have killed you,” she said blithely, leaning back to inspect her bandaging.
“You live with this Johnstone. How cozy.” He sounded like a churlish prude even to his own ears—or worse yet, he sounded just plain jealous.
Olivia stiffened. “Yes, it is—or it was until you horned in. We should’ve left you to the mercies of the English agent and his young Osage warriors.”
His fever fogged brain suddenly became crystal clear. “What do you know about this Englishman?”
She shrugged. “Only what Micajah was told by old White Hair. He’s been stirring up the young firebrands among the Osage who are tired of the Americans breaking their treaty promises.”
“He was coming to Pawhuska’s town?” he asked, trying to sit up.
“He’s probably there now, but you’re hardly in any shape to go chasing after him,” she said, noting with satisfaction that he had the good sense to give in to the pain and lean back against the pillows. She felt a sudden need to place some distance between them. She stood up and walked over to the hearth where her stew pot bubbled, then ladled a small amount of broth into a bowl.
Samuel cursed silently at his failure to complete his mission. “If the Englishman wins over the Osage, the Missouri will run red with blood.”
“And you could change all that?” She looked at him skeptically, holding the bowl in front of her.
“If I had caught up with the bastard, yes, I might have,” he replied stubbornly. “How long have I been here?”
“Several weeks, give or take a few days. We don’t have much need to look at calendars around here,” she said dryly, approaching the side of the bed with a bowl and spoon in hand. “Now, open wide. You need some nourishment.”
“What I need is to get the hell up and back to Pawhuska’s village.”
“Try not to make yourself an even bigger ass than nature already has made you,” she said sweetly. “You’re starved, slashed, fevered—and you’ve been soundly coshed in the head. Not to mention that your feet look like cabbage slaw. You couldn’t even stand on them, much less walk. Open wide.” She held a spoonful of broth up to his mouth.
He considered protesting her high-handed assumption that he would be a docile patient but just then his stomach, so long without food, gave a low insistent rumble. He capitulated and opened his mouth. “That’s delicious. Did you make it?” The question was meant to be sarcastic.
And so Olivia took it. “Remembering my coffee?” She tried to keep the tartness from her voice. “Micajah has taught me how to cook what I shoot, as well as how to dress the skins and preserve the meat.”
“I can’t help but wonder what else Micajah’s taught you,” he muttered beneath his breath.
Olivia heard him and angrily jerked the spoon away from his mouth, spilling the scalding broth across his chest. “I should’ve left you lying by the riverbank and let that Englishman carve you up!” She slammed the spoon down into the broth, splattering his bare chest with even more hot liquid. “Here, feed yourself.” She shoved the bowl into his hand when he raised it to wipe off the burning broth.
“Ouch! Dammit, that hurts,” he yelled, his voice cracking. When he tried to hold the bowl up, he found to his horror that his hands were so weak he almost dropped the whole scalding hot mess all over himself. Resting the bowl on his chest, he called out to her, “I’m sorry. Please, come take this before I add burns to all my other injuries.”
At once Olivia felt contrite. He had nearly died of his wounds. The fever had broken only that morning and here she was expecting him to be able to sit up and eat by himself.
But he made her so infuriatingly angry that she could kill him every time they passed more than half an hour together. “Here, I’ll feed you,” she said ungraciously, taking the bowl from him and sitting down on the edge of the bed once more.
God, how haggard and pale he looked. “What happened to you—how did you end up half-dead and naked, wandering afoot through the woods?”
“I was careless,” he said disgustedly. “Some of that damned Englishman’s allies—those young Osage hotheads you mentioned—captured me.”
“And you escaped?” she prompted, continuing to spoon the broth down him.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?” she mimicked.
“They stripped my boots and shirt, then had me run a gauntlet between a dozen armed warriors.”
“A dozen! I can’t believe you made it.”
“Neit
her can I,” he replied grimly. “That’s how I got the slash in my side to add to the lovely little tap with a war club that brought me down in the first place. But I did manage to get past them. They graciously gave me a couple of hundred yards lead before giving chase. I’ve never run so hard or so long in my life.”
“That’s how you got all those thistles in your feet.” She winced thinking of running across a field of the tough spiny weeds barefooted.
“That was the least of my problems, believe me.” Briefly he outlined the rest of his escape, the fight with Man Whipper and his subsequent blackouts and wandering until he found the Osage village.
When he had finished the tale and the broth, his small reserve of strength was spent. Olivia could see his eyelids growing heavy. Just as she started to rise from the bed, Micajah walked into the cabin. His big frame filled the doorway as he peered at Shelby and his Sparky sitting so cozily by his side.
“So, our soldier boy finally waked up.” He noticed how quickly she scooted off the bed, making a big production of washing the bowl and spoon in the pan of water sitting on the kitchen table.
“He won’t be awake for long. He’s still too weak to hold his head up,” she said matter-of-factly, not expressing the relief she felt that he had at last awakened.
Samuel stared at the great grizzly of a man looming over him. Good lord, he was old enough to be Olivia’s father—her grandfather! At once his snide words came back to haunt him. Damn, why did he blurt out such tomfool stupid things around that woman? “You must be Micajah Johnstone. I’m greatly obliged for the hospitality. You’ve saved my life.”
“Warn’t me. Sparky here’s th’ one whut took keer o’ yew.”
Sparky?
Micajah continued on, “She sat up ever’ night sinc’t we come home from th’ Osage town. Acted plumb skittish ever’ time thet litter we wuz carryin’ yew on took a leetle bump. She sewed up thet cut on yer side. Didn’t want ta do hit neither, till I held up one o’ these.” He gestured with his huge meaty hand. “This here’s more o’ a bar paw than hit is anythin’ human. I ‘spect if I wuz ta try stitchin’ up yer side yew’d o’ felt like yew’d been mauled. Onc’t she seen my drift, Sparky here took thet needle ‘n did a right proper job of hit. Course, she wuz real worried ‘bout—”