The river was wide and beautiful, with high grassy banks and a swift blue current in the middle. The forest crowded to the very edge of the banks. Beneath the trees the heat was a mere memory. The air was not merely cool, but turning cold.
Flagging badly but afraid that if she collapsed, as her body threatened to do, they would slay her and leave her cooling corpse as food for the wolves, Caroline gritted her teeth, forced all thought from her mind, and set herself to matching as best she could their curiously silent gait. When at last the little band stopped, toward sunset of the day following her capture, Caroline sank to her knees with relief. Were she to have no sleep this night either, she would not be able to go on in the morn. And then what would happen to her? She shuddered to think.
Trilling birdcalls whistled back and forth through the trees. It took Caroline a few minutes to realize that the nearest of these emerged from the leader’s leathery throat. An answer, from somewhere no very great distance away, caused one of the braves to pull her to her feet and push her, stumbling, in the direction of the sound.
Like an army regiment escorting a prisoner, her captors closed ranks around her, and in this fashion they emerged through the trees into an Indian camp.
It was situated in a lush, well-guarded valley, at the side of a small deep-blue lake, though the term pond would have fit as well. Perhaps two dozen huts, unkempt pyramids of sticks and straw as scraggly as hayricks, composed the main of the village. Numerous small campfires dotted the enclave, while in its center a larger fire blazed. Squaws in shapeless, ragged garments turned from their cooking, incuriously, to eye the approach of the small band. Children and dogs watched with a degree more interest, a few of the former ceasing their play to gather round and a few of the latter bracing themselves to bark a greeting.
Caroline was taken through the camp to the center fire. There a quartet of old men squatted, passing a feathered pipe back and forth among them. They looked up, their eyes as black as their coarse hair, as the newcomers stopped on the other side of the fire. The blade-faced leader walked forward, while one of the four men, the one who looked the oldest, rose, and the two exchanged greetings. Then the leader, who was tall, muscular, and, Caroline thought, fairly young, gestured, and another brave pulled her forward to shove her in front of the blanket-wrapped old man.
His skin was the color of red mahogany, his eyes, set in a nest of wrinkles, dark, liquid, and intelligent. For the rest, he perhaps just topped the warrior’s shoulder, and he seemed paunchy beneath the blanket. His nose was broad, his mouth no more than a slash in a face that was square and pitted and fearsome. Caroline felt a spurt of renewed fright as she realized that this was the chief and that her fate most likely rested in his hands.
He gestured. The gag was removed, and her hands were unbound. Caroline rubbed her wrists, ran her tongue along her dry lips, and waited for what would happen next.
The old man looked her up and down.
“You wise woman?” he asked. His English was guttural in tone, but understandable.
Caroline blinked. Whatever she had expected, it was not to be addressed, perfectly rationally, in her own tongue. She opened her mouth to deny it, thought better of it, and nodded once. Almost holding her breath, she waited to discover if her answer to his question was the one he wanted.
“Good. It is as we have heard from our brothers who visit the white man’s village to trade. They told us that you held the Great Spirit of Death back from your man with your medicine. We have sickness here. You come.”
He turned, heading toward one of the huts. A shove in the small of her back left Caroline in no doubt that she was to follow.
As she ducked to enter, the odor of illness inside the hut almost made her recoil. A small fire burned in the center of the hut, its smoke rising to the sky through a tiny hole in the peaked roof, but also filling the interior with eye-stinging haze. Refuse cluttered the earth floor. A young woman crouching beside a pallet turned to stare at them as they approached. On the pallet another young woman lay inert, swathed in blankets to her chin. It was clear from first glance that the supine young woman was very ill.
“This fever has killed six so far in our tribe. Our medicine does not help. Finally we think, it is white man’s illness. We need white man’s medicine. You will help my daughter.”
Suddenly the reason for Caroline’s presence became clear. Relief made her light-headed for a second as she realized that they meant her no harm. As she looked down at the unconscious maiden, it occurred to her that she might not be able to do anything to help the chief’s daughter. If that were the case, if the girl died, would she then be killed?
“I will try,” Caroline replied cautiously, and knelt beside the girl The other young woman moved aside to make room. The victim’s skin, when Caroline touched it lightly, was burning and dry. She seemed to have no awareness of anything at all.
“How long has she been like this?” Caroline asked the old man over her shoulder.
“Two days since. The others have all died in three.”
The kneeling girl said something to the old man, who translated for Caroline’s benefit.
“She has vomited, and has passed much waste matter that looks like rice water. My other daughter, Ninaran, says that her sister Pinochet is gravely ill.”
“I will do what I can,” Caroline promised.
For the next few hours, with the help of Ninaran, she labored to force liquids into the stricken girl. The Indians had few medicines that she recognized, but she did the best she could, and she thought that there was some slight improvement. Finally, when the fever rose so high that Caroline feared that it alone might kill Pinochet, she, with the help of Ninaran and two other women of the tribe, wrapped the girl in soaking blankets, just as she had done with Matt. And finally, as dawn streaked the sky, there was no doubt that the girl was better. Caroline thought, and said, that she would with careful nursing recover. What she kept to herself was the suspicion that no intervention of hers had turned the tide. God had selected this one to live, or the girl’s own body had refused to recognize its destined fate. Because, in the hours before the fever broke, all Caroline’s healing skills had told her that Pinochet would die.
So tired that she could scarcely focus, Caroline was at last led away to a pallet and allowed to sleep. When she awoke, it was to find the day well advanced. There was a squaw in the hut with her, regarding her with bovine eyes, but the woman made no move to hinder her as Caroline unwound herself from the nest of blankets and walked to the door of the hut.
It was a gray day, amazingly cold considering the heat of the day before, and very still. With no one to stop her, Caroline left the hut to which she had been taken and made her way to the one she thought held Pinochet. She was right, she discovered as she entered, and after a few minutes’ check of the patient and a sign-language conversation with Ninaran, she left that hut in search of food.
As before, the three blanket-wrapped old men squatted before the center fire, passing their single pipe between them. A thick-waisted squaw stirred a pot suspended from a tripod, from which emanated a delicious smell. Her fear of the Indians having largely disappeared, Caroline headed toward the quartet and that enticing aroma.
She had just reached them when a horse and rider rode into the camp.
The rider was muffled up to his ears in a beaver coat, and a large black hat sitting low on his brow did much to conceal his face. Still, Caroline had no difficulty at all in recognizing him.
“Matt!” she cried joyfully, quite forgetting their quarrel and everything else in her pleasure and relief at seeing him.
“Ah,” the old chief remarked knowledgeably, getting to his feet even as warriors surrounded Matt’s horse, “your man?”
Caroline nodded, and with the chief’s escort hurried toward the place where the young men of the tribe gathered, blocking Matt’s access to the camp. Matt appeared unarmed, and there were no drawn weapons among the braves that Caroline could see, but if an
ything went wrong the situation could turn ugly very swiftly.
The braves cleared a path for their chief, and Matt dismounted as they approached. His stance was stiff, his eyes wary, his mouth grim. His gaze ran swiftly over Caroline as she neared him, seemingly to assure himself that she was unharmed. Her welcoming smile must have reassured him because a degree of rigidity left his jaw. Nevertheless, his right hand snaked out to grip her arm hard and draw her close to his side.
“I am Habocum, sachem of the Corchaugs,” the old chief said to Matt. “You have come for your woman.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Matt nodded. “Yes.”
“She has done much good here. My youngest daughter was dying when she came, and your woman has restored to her the breath of life. We would gift her with many presents, except that we have been impoverished by the white man until we have little to give. But we give you, and her, our thanks.”
“You’re very welcome,” Caroline said, smiling at the old chief. She would have said more had not a very hard look from Matt warned her to silence.
“I will take her home with me now,” he said to Habocum, who nodded.
“You will need food for your journey, and blankets. The sky promises snow.”
In short order the promised supplies were handed over and tied to the horse’s saddle, except for one varicolored blanket that Matt wrapped around Caroline. She gave last-minute instructions about the continuing treatment that Pinochet would need to Habocum, who nodded gravely, and then, almost before she had finished speaking, Matt was lifting her into the saddle and swinging up behind her. He replied with no more than a nod to Habocum’s hand lifted in farewell as he turned the horse about and headed out of the camp. As they passed the last barking dog, squaws were stripping huts. Possessions were being bundled up and fires smothered. It was obvious that the little band was breaking camp and preparing to move on.
“You were rude,” Caroline said accusingly when they were under the protection of the trees and safely out of eyeshot and earshot.
“Rude?” Matt sounded as if words threatened to fail him. “That was Habocum, my poppet. Not half a dozen years ago he led a war party that decimated a whole settlement not far from Wethersfield. He was subdued, and his tribe largely wiped out, but he was never captured and has been on the run ever since. He’s known for being bloodthirsty, and he hates the white man. I consider us fortunate to have escaped with whole skins, and saw no reason to linger to give him time to reconsider the matter.”
“You came alone?” Matt’s bravery in doing so was just beginning to occur to her.
“I did not want to waste time trying to recruit volunteers from the town, and James and Dan were away. Rob and Thorn, being somewhat hotheaded, are not always assets on an expedition of this nature, and in any case they were needed at home. And in my dealings with Indians I have found that they respond more positively to a single, reasonable man than to an armed band threatening bloodshed. Besides, if you were to be recovered at all, it needed to be done swiftly. I feared what I might find if I tarried overlong.”
The notion that Matt had been afraid for her made Caroline smile a little, and she rested her head against the plush fur covering his chest. He was dressed for the cold in ankle-length coat and knee-high boots, wide-brimmed hat and leather gloves. There were lines of fatigue around his eyes, and his jaw was bristly with blue-black stubble as he had not shaved in a day and a half. Even so, he looked very handsome, and so masculine that Caroline felt a tingling of her nerve endings as she looked up at him. Though since she had known him he rarely rode horseback, he seemed at ease in the saddle, and the horse that spent most of its days cavorting in a back field was docile under his hands. Whatever Matt did, he did it well, it seemed. Although, as she thought about that, she made a mental exception of his singing, and smiled again.
Riding before him in the saddle, his arm around her waist to keep her in place, Caroline was tired but content. Even through the blanket that swaddled her, she could feel the muscular strength of that arm and the spread thighs that cradled her buttocks. Settling herself closer against him, she faced the fact squarely: she loved the maddening, impossible man. She meant to have him and no other, whatever it took.
“I was glad to see you,” she confessed.
“I was glad to see you too, especially alive and in one piece,” he answered dryly.
“I was never really in danger, I think.”
“Would that I had known that. I’ve probably lost a good dozen years off my life in the last day and a half.”
“What would you have done, had they not let me go?” Pictures of a bloody battle made her shiver. But magnificent though Matt was, he would surely have lost. He was a farmer, not a soldier, and one man alone. What kind of battle could he have waged against a whole tribe?
“I would have bartered for you.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw his mouth ease into a faint grin. “Horse, coat, musket, whatever it took. I even brought some skins along. And a side of bacon, and two jugs of rum. I was fairly confident I could get them to agree to the trade, if you were still unharmed when I caught up with you.” He paused, and a shade of tension entered his voice. “You are unharmed, aren’t you? They didn’t touch you?”
Caroline shook her head. “I’m tired, and nigh perishing of hunger, but that’s all. Were you truly frightened when you discovered I was missing, Matt?”
“A little.”
She poked him with her elbow in retaliation. He grunted, but she thought he must hardly have felt it through the thick coat.
“When I found you gone, and discovered the basket and gun fallen beside the path—’twas a moment the likes of which I hope never to live through again.”
The gruff admission made Caroline’s heart stop. There was so much she wanted to say—and more that she wanted to hear him say—but she was tired to her bones, and the motion of the horse was lulling her almost to sleep. The conversation she had in mind was best postponed until she was fully in possession of her senses.
“Can we stop to eat, do you think?” was all she said.
“Did they not feed you?” Without stopping the horse, he turned in the saddle, rummaging in the bag tied on behind, and came up with an apple, which he handed to her.
“I’d prefer to get as far as we can before the weather hits, if this will keep you from starvation until we stop.”
With a wordless grumble and a pained look at the apple, Caroline accepted it and bit into the red skin. The fruit, tart and juicy, tasted like nectar. She munched it, polishing it off until naught but the skinniest piece of core remained, then tossed it overboard while she licked her sticky fingers. When she glanced back at Matt, expecting to find him watching her amused, she discovered a frown instead, as he looked at the sky through the bare patches in the canopy above them.
“Is something wrong?” Caroline asked, worried by his expression.
“If I’m not mistaken, we’ll have snow before nightfall.”
“But we won’t be home by then!”
“No.”
“What will we do?”
Matt shook his head. “If it’s bad, take shelter until it’s over. If not, ride through it. I’ve done it before.”
“You have?”
“Many times when we first came here, before the settlement was well established and the house built. You’d be amazed to know what a wilderness this part of the country used to be.”
As it seemed a wilderness to her still, Caroline found the notion that it had once been wilder yet appalling. But now that the sharpest pangs of her hunger had been appeased, sleepiness was taking its toll. Huddling more closely into the blanket, she allowed her head to drop back against him, smiling at him when he glanced down at her.
“You look stove-in, poppet,” he said, the curve of his mouth almost tender. “Why don’t you give up and go to sleep? You can trust me to get you home safe.”
“I know. But I’m not all that tired.”
“No?�
��
“No.”
He said nothing more, just settled his arm more firmly about her waist as he guided the horse toward home, using the river as his map. Lulled by the gentle rocking, the warmth of his body behind her, and the security of knowing herself safe in his hands, Caroline allowed her eyes to close. Just for a minute, to rest her heavy lids.
Moments later she was asleep. And while she was asleep the threatened snow began to fall.
37
The cessation of motion woke her, she thought. Blinking, eyes widening as she saw nothing for a moment but a swirl of white, Caroline felt momentarily disoriented. She was aware that she was on horseback, with Matt behind her shouting something in her ear, and that the blinding, shifting curtain before her eyes was wind-driven snow.
“What?” she asked, but the wind blew the question away unheard. She had no need to worry, however. Matt was already repeating himself, his arm tightening about her ribcage and his bristly jaw grazing her ear as he roared.
“We’re not going to make it. We’ll have to take shelter.”
“Where?” But this, too, swirled away with the snow. He was already dismounting, and Caroline acutely felt the loss of his heat and strength behind her. The wind buffeted her, driving icy needles of snow into the skin of her face as, by his going, he dislodged the fold of blanket he must have pulled up to protect her as she slept. She shivered, clinging to the saddle horn, fighting to catch her breath in the fierce cold. How had such a temperature change come on so fast?
Matt, on the ground beside the horse, shouted something that she couldn’t understand. But when he held up his arms to her, she slid into them, allowing him to lift her down and set her on her feet beside him. The thick carpet of leaves that lay over the forest floor was covered now with perhaps half an inch of glistening snow. More snow, falling from a sky the color of pewter, was pushed by the whistling wind into white crusts that held fast to tree trunks and rocks. Matt pointed to what looked like a solid cliff face, and though she still couldn’t understand what he was saying, she allowed him to lead her toward it. The horse, its reins trailing, was left behind.
This Side of Heaven Page 27