Just Once

by Jill Marie Landis

  Cold and empty.

  As Hunter held Jemma’s shoe, cradling it against him, he refused to believe he had seen the last of her. If her shoe had washed up, why hadn’t she? He wished he had listened more closely when she told him about the legion of saints she prayed to. At this point, he was willing to try anything.

  The water lapped gently against his feet. He looked down, hoping for a sign, another shoe, anything. A cluster of broken reeds drew his attention. His gaze scanned the riverbank to the right. Rain had gathered in a group of muddy depressions not far away. He leaned closer, confirming the fact that he was looking at footprints. Small, barefooted footprints.

  He slapped the shoe against his palm and stifled a joyous shout, fearing he’d spook the horses. Jemma was on dry land. She was alive.

  Perhaps she was stumbling around alone and disoriented, but at least she was alive. Determined to track her down, he knew that she was exhausted, maybe even in shock. She wouldn’t get far. Hunter bent close and traced her footprint with his fingertips. He climbed the riverbank and stopped dead still at the top. The small prints were intermingled with another, larger set made by someone wearing moccasins. His heart missed a beat. She wasn’t alone anymore. The tracks led away from the river toward the piney wood with its maze of Indian and buffalo trails.

  Hunter hurried over to the horses, loaded and primed his rifle, and hung it over the lead horse’s saddle horn. He strapped his hunting knife to his side and made sure his shot bag was fastened to the belt at his waist. He was ready.

  Picking up the reins he stayed on foot, running ahead of the ponies. Head down, he followed Jemma’s footprints, searching the trampled, wet ground for signs of her.

  “St. Genevieve, you’re the only one I haven’t called on lately. If you’re watching, help me. Please.” Jemma hastily crossed herself as Many Feathers, in all his toothless glory, shook his fist to make some point or another before he shoved her inside his crude dwelling.

  Jemma squinted and looked around the dark interior. The place was nothing more than a hovel made of stakes shoved into the ground, plastered with mud inside and out—giving it a dank, musty smell that mingled with the smoke from a fire burning low in the middle of the single room.

  “And St. Genevieve, please hurry.” It wasn’t often that she invoked the patron saint of disasters who had saved the Parisians from Attila and the Huns, but she was desperate. Being locked in an Indian hut in the middle of no place left little room for hesitation.

  As her eyes became adjusted to the gloom, Jemma noticed a low platform of oak saplings covered with woven cane mats and skins. Obviously the old man’s bed, it looked big enough for four. She shivered involuntarily.

  “Mister Feathers …” Jemma began inching toward the low door, the only opening besides the hole in the roof that allowed smoke to escape. She pointed toward herself. “I go now.” She pointed at the door, at herself and at the door again. “I go.” She smiled and nodded. “All right?”

  He shut the door, which was nothing more than wooden stakes lashed together, and proceeded to stand in front of it with his arms crossed over a bony chest barely visible between the edges of his soiled flannel garment.

  Her panic mounted. “I’m still not interested in marrying you, if that’s what you’re after. Believe me,” she said with a toss of her head, “better men have tried. Why, my father—”

  He barked a strange, guttural word at her, put his hand on her shoulder, and shoved her farther into the center of the room.

  She shoved him back. “Don’t touch me, please!”

  He pushed her into the mud wall. Shocked speechless, Jemma stayed put, watching as he walked to a pile of furs. Implements for planting were scattered around the place, along with colorful baskets woven of dyed cane. Many Feathers sifted through a basket of goods, finally picking up a leather cord to which various nuts had been tied. Curious, she watched as he tied the cord to his wrist and then another to his ankle. The nuts made a hollow sound when he moved.

  Next the old man pulled out a wad of dried bronze tobacco leaves tied together. He walked over to her and rubbed the tobacco against the side of her face and started to trail it down her neck.

  “Stop that!” she demanded, trying to slap his hand away.

  He tossed the tobacco back into the cane basket.

  She heard a shout followed by laughter outside. The village had appeared small, no more than a gathering of five or six wood-and-mud dwellings, but she couldn’t be certain how many Indians might have occupied the cornfields they had passed on the way.

  Many Feathers was jumping around now, waving his arms, singing and droning some sort of off-key song in his language, rattling the nut bells on his wrist and ankle and glancing over at her on occasion as if to see whether she was impressed by the show.

  Jemma crossed her arms and shook her head. Let him dance all night. Let him dance for a month. He was never going to persuade her to marry him.

  Was Hunter alive? If so, where in heaven’s name was he and how was he ever going to find her here?

  In the middle of Many Feathers’s performance the door suddenly opened, nearly knocking the old man to his knees. Forced to stoop to enter, a younger version of Many Feathers walked into the hut and straightened to an imposing height. Like the old man, he wore a colorful turban of crimson and saffron yellow. His pants were bright red flannel with blue stripes down the inseams, and his shirt was appliquéd in brilliant design. He wore a beaded choker.

  As he slung a blanket that held a heavy burden off his shoulders, he pinned Jemma with a dark stare that swept her from head to toe, then entered into a fast and furious conversation with Many Feathers, often gesturing in Jemma’s direction.

  While the men argued heatedly, Jemma began inching toward the door. Without any notion of what she would do once she escaped the hut, she had her hand on the crude latch and was about to bolt when the young Choctaw slammed his hand against the door and shouted, “Stop!”

  Jemma whirled on him. His gaze was shrewd and calculating as he silently sized her up.

  “You speak English?” she asked, amazed.

  “Is that so strange?” he asked. The coldness in his voice whipped through her. “There are too many of you whites here now. I learn your tongue for my own good.”

  Jemma shivered. “Who are you? What is this place?”

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m Jemma.” She pointed at Many Feathers, who stood behind the young man, watching silently. “He kidnapped me.”

  “He is my father, Many Feathers. In your language, I am called Soaring Raven.”

  “He walked into our camp last night and wanted to buy me to be his wife.”

  The young man barked off a laugh but did not smile. “He intends for you to be my wife.”

  “Your wife? That’s impossible.”

  Soaring Raven nodded. “That is what I told him. Who wants a wife with skin the color of the full moon and holes in her cheeks?” He reached out to touch one of her dimples.

  Jemma slapped his hand away. “Now that that’s settled, tell him to let me go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Back to the river where he found me. I have to find the man I hired to see me safely up north.” She tried to swallow her mounting panic.

  “He is not doing a very good job.”

  “He was until our raft capsized crossing the river.”

  Soaring Raven shot her another sullen glance and then began to unwrap a hunk of meat that he had carried in the blanket.

  Jemma looked away.

  “When you are hungry enough, you will not turn your face away from this food.”

  “I don’t plan on staying that long.”

  Soaring Raven took a step closer. “No? And where do you go? Do you think this white man who lost you once will be able to find you here?” His gaze raked her from toes to hairline. “Maybe you are too much trouble. Maybe he is happy to be rid of you.”

  Jemma r
ubbed her arms. Exhaustion was wearing on her already frayed nerves. Her clothing was still damp. Mud was encrusted in every fiber of her baggy shirt and trousers. She was hungry and tired and at the end of her rope.

  She certainly didn’t want to think Hunter Boone might be happy to be rid of her, but Soaring Raven had a point.

  “He’ll find me—and when he does, you’ll be sorry.” She tried to muster some bravado.

  Soaring Raven crossed his arms. “I am already sorry to have laid eyes on you. My father is sometimes a fool in his old age. I do not want a white wife. I would waste all my time beating you to get you to obey.”

  “Then if you don’t mind, I’ll be leaving.” She reached for the door latch again.

  Many Feathers broke into a spate of rapid-fire Choctaw and wild gestures that sent the nut bells ringing hollowly.

  “Whether I want you or not, you belong to my father now. Here you will stay until he decides to sell you or release you.”

  Jemma’s heart sank. Many Feathers was smiling his gap-toothed smile. She groaned.

  “Come with me. You will do woman’s work.” Soaring Raven opened the low door.

  Jemma tried to tell herself that her situation was only temporary, that she should be relishing the opportunity to learn all she could of these people while she was here. This was more than a grand adventure. This was a thrilling, firsthand look at primitive life.

  But she couldn’t convince herself of anything of the sort. All she wanted right now was to backtrack the way Many Feathers had brought her and begin searching the riverbank for Hunter.

  “I’m not going to do anything until you let me go.”

  Soaring Raven took her chin in his hand, leaned close, and said slowly and distinctly, “I do not care what you want or don’t want. You belong to my father and you will obey him. You will obey me and you will not shame us. If you do, you will be beaten. You are lucky I have not yet cut off all of your hair.”

  Her hand crept up to her tangled hair. “You can’t be serious.”

  Without another word, Soaring Raven stooped to duck beneath the door frame and stepped out into the sunlight. As Jemma followed him outside, Many Feathers’s nut bells thunked mournfully.

  Hunter crouched in a stand of trees and underbrush, hoping his vantage point was not laced with poison oak. Hidden on the edge of the Choctaw cornfield, he had a clear view of the settlement. The footprints had led him to the outskirts of the village, and once he realized Jemma had to be there, he doubled back and left the horses hidden in a meadow where they could not be heard or easily discovered.

  Six houses sat in a cluster, some with gardens of pumpkins, squash, and fruit trees alongside. He could smell apples rotting on the ground beneath the trees. His empty stomach grumbled. There was a long common house in the center of the village, a dwelling with no windows where the clan would reside in winter.

  On a platform high above the cornfield, two Choctaw women acted as human scarecrows, constantly flapping their arms, shouting at the crows and other birds that threatened to steal ripe corn still to be picked. Their colorful red and blue striped skirts stood in brilliant contrast against the azure sky.

  Men and women moved easily about the settlement. Beside one shelter, a wrinkled old woman dyed split cane splinters in pots of color made from bloodroot, butternut, and black walnut. Nearby, a younger woman wove the cane into baskets, using the intricate checkerwork design committed to memory from tribal lore.

  He glanced over at the log mortar and bit back another relieved smile. Earlier, he had been elated to see a disgruntled Jemma being led over to an upright hickory log that had been hollowed out by charring and scraping. As Many Feathers followed in her wake, she grudgingly trailed another tall Choctaw, arguing and balking every step of the way. The younger man quickly turned her over to the women grinding corn in the log mortar. Shoving and pinching her, the women showed Jemma how to pound kernels into cornmeal with long hickory-pole pestles.

  As he watched, Jemma often paused, ostensibly to wipe her brow on her sleeve, but Hunter could tell that she was really casting surreptitious glances around the camp, looking for a way to escape. He wished there were some way to let her know he was nearby before she tried to escape on her own.

  Crouching in the undergrowth, Hunter shifted, trying to ease a cramp in his leg. For the moment Jemma seemed safe enough. He hoped she would not do anything to endanger herself before he could get to her. Her shoulders sagged with exhaustion. Her hair was matted and tangled with twigs and grass.

  He could see by the determined set of her shoulders that she was not about to let the situation get her down, but even from a distance he could tell that she was pale and exhausted.

  Whenever she paused too long to rest or examine the palms of her hands, she earned a sharp rap on the head from one of the women around her. Jemma was no doubt praying, but Hunter knew that even if there was a patron saint of great escapes, if anyone was going to get her out of this fix, it was going to have to be him.

  Chapter 7

  Weak enough to collapse, Jemma refused to cry. Her palms were blistered, but she would not give the women beside her the satisfaction of seeing her shed a single tear. Nor would she give up hope. If Hunter was dead, if he never came to her rescue, then she was determined to walk out of this place on her own bare feet. This was worse than endless hours of embroidery. There was no way she was going to live out the rest of her days pounding corn into dust.

  She raised the five-foot-long hickory pestle and brought it down with as much vengeance as she could muster, despite the pain in her hands. Her mind wandered through her list of saints. The way things were going, it would not do her any good to overwork anyone.

  She decided upon St. Leonard of Noblac, the patron saint of prisoners, whose symbolic emblems were fetters and manacles. About to begin a prayer, she realized that the tinkling of shell bracelets had suddenly stopped. The women around her had abruptly quit pounding corn.

  A chorus of shouts went up. Men, women, and children had stopped their work and play to watch a tall white man in buckskins lead a horse into the heart of the village.

  “Hunter!” Jemma let go of the hickory-wood pole. It clattered against the side of the log mortar before it hit the ground. She shook off the hold of the woman beside her and broke free. Her bare feet hit the ground with uneven slaps as she barreled toward Hunter, running with all the strength she could muster. Her heart pounded joyously with each step.

  Jemma launched herself at him, threw her arms around his neck, and hung on for dear life.

  “I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life! I thought you would never get here!”

  He pried her loose and set her firmly on her feet. What a truly glorious sight he was, despite the golden stubble on his jaw and his wild mane of unruly hair. He did not smile down at her, but kept his gaze constantly roving over the gathering Choctaw slowly hemming them in.

  “Where were you? How did you find me?” Overwhelmed by relief, it was all she could do not to grab him again. “I told that odious man that you would come after me, but he refused to listen.” She glanced at the faces surrounding them until she saw Soaring Raven.

  Pointing, she said, “That’s Many Feathers’s son. They are the ones who are keeping me here.”

  Hunter had not moved since she reached him, nor did he now. Instead, he gently laid his hand on her shoulder. His touch was warm, steady. His calm communicated itself to her. He continued to stare at the people around them. When he finally spoke, his tone was low and firm.

  “I’m going to try to get you out of here, Jemma, but you have to do exactly as I say—”

  “What do you mean, try?”

  “There are certain formalities to be observed.”

  “But—”

  He gently gave her shoulder another squeeze. “Trust me,” he whispered. His eyes met hers and held her gaze.

  He was her only option, her only hope.

  “And Jemma?” he added.
<
br />   “What?”

  “Better start praying.”

  She crossed herself, swiftly and silently appealing to Leonard of Noblac as Hunter stepped forward, pulling her along with him while the small gathering stepped aside. He soon stood toe-to-toe with Soaring Raven.

  “I want to swap,” Hunter said, making the sign for trade.

  “No swap!” Many Feathers, standing beside his son, shouted and shook his fist.

  Soaring Raven crossed his arms and waited while Hunter made the sign for “trade” again.

  “Soaring Raven speaks excellent English,” Jemma whispered with a tug on Hunter’s sleeve. “Talk to him.”

  Again, Hunter squeezed her shoulder.

  “She is my father’s property,” the man informed Hunter.

  Jemma shot her gaze up at Hunter. “I told you.”

  Hunter ignored her. “I want to trade for this worthless woman,” he said.

  “Worthless? Hunter Boone, I swear—”

  Hunter continued without acknowledging her outburst. “She is nothing but trouble, but I will be happy to take her off your hands.”

  “If she is so much trouble, why do you want her back?” Soaring Raven countered.

  “I made a promise to see her safely north. My honor demands that I keep that promise; otherwise I would gladly let you have her,” Hunter explained.

  Jemma gasped. “You are actually bartering with him? I don’t believe this—”

  Hunter slowly turned and pinned her with a stare frigid enough to freeze water. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “This is a hell of a time to start arguing. I thought I asked you to trust me and pray. Now, do you think you can do that and stay out of this?”

  She scrunched her eyes into slits and glared back at him.

  “Come, we will go inside,” Soaring Raven said, turning to lead the way to his father’s home. “I am as anxious to be rid of this troublesome woman as you are, but my father must be persuaded to let her go.”