by Lori Benton
“Shiloh isn’t the setting of one of your poems, and I’m no ‘shepherd of the forest’ or any such nonsense. I’m just a man with skin too brown for the liking of most, and there’s no changing that.”
“I wouldn’t change it. Nor anything else about you.”
“Catriona—why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want me so?”
“You already know. And there’s no changing that either. Do you no longer love me?”
Matthew muttered something strangled, then . . . silence.
Seona wanted to hear no more of this fraught conversation. Before she could move, Matthew strode from the stable. A glimpse of his face revealed a contortion of unhappiness, laced through with a conflicting satisfaction. He was headed back to Ian’s shop, where work had not yet resumed. Seona didn’t think he had seen her.
She debated whether to check on Catriona or fetch the water like she was meant to be doing—taking the long way around the stable-yard. Before she could decide, Catriona emerged, the corners of her mouth turned up, verging on a smile. As blind to Seona as Matthew had been, she headed for the cabins.
Seona fetched the water, then detoured to the workshop. Malcolm, finished with his dinner, had dozed off on a stack of baled straw inside the shop. Matthew was outside, standing before Joseph and Ian, who were seated on the ground, bowls in hand.
“I’m going, Uncle. Just for the day.”
“Hunting for a few hours only?” Joseph stood and looked at the sun, already edging westward. “When you said you would help with these desks for your sister?”
“I’m not helping. If anything, I’m slowing you down.” Matthew gestured at the pile of wood still in the wagon’s bed. “And you’re the one who promised to do it. Not me.”
Joseph drilled his nephew with a look. “I promised my sister other things.”
“To mind me—as if I were a child? I’m going hunting, Uncle.”
Gathering up the bowls, Ian stood and headed toward Seona with an apologetic look. He took the full bucket from her. She took the bowls, about to suggest they leave nephew and uncle to sort things, when a bark announced Ally come up from the pasture, Nip and Tuck bounding ahead.
Inside the shop, Malcolm slept on, snoring softly.
Ally’s broad face brightened at sight of the bowls, but he paused to say, “I’ll go with you, Matthew, you don’t mind me eating dinner first.”
Ian set the water bucket down. “Ally, he means to go hunting.”
“I heard,” Ally said.
“And ye want to go? Why?”
Ally spied his dozing grandfather. “Look there. My granddaddy sleeping in the middle of the day again. It got me thinking, Mister Ian. He won’t always be around, telling me how to do.”
Seona felt a catch in her throat, glancing at the old man fast asleep. Ally spoke true, but his noticing made it somehow more real.
“I know it,” Ian said, not without compassion. “But why does that make ye want to go hunting, of all things?”
Ally sniffed. “Mama be the boss of her kitchen. But she don’t know other things. Cabin raising. Cattle tending. I need to know some things my own self.”
“I agree,” Ian said. “But hunting? Ye know what that means?”
Ally swallowed hard. “Killing critters for the table.”
“Have ye even shot a gun?”
“Ain’t never pulled a trigger. But when you go off places, you ask Mister Neil or Matthew to mind us. Better maybe I can do the minding when those times come up.”
Seona wasn’t sure if she was proud of Ally’s turn of mind or saddened by the need. Ally didn’t know about Aram Crane, but even he sensed something had Ian worried, reluctant to leave them unguarded.
“I don’t have a gun to spare ye,” Ian said.
“I’ve a musket you can use, Ally.” Matthew turned to Joseph. “I’ll teach him to shoot it. That satisfy you?”
Before his uncle could answer, Lily stepped from Naomi’s cabin with the children, the pair wiped down for the moment. Spying their parents standing outside the shop, they came running. Gabriel collided with his daddy’s knees before Ian swooped him up and held him upside down. While her brother whooped and chortled, Mandy came to Seona, who knelt to hug the little girl close.
Next she knew, Matthew and Ally were trudging off to Naomi’s cabin, collies trailing. Joseph watched them go, shared a look with Ian, then pulled a plank of wood off the wagon’s bed.
“Where are those two headed?” Lily asked.
“Going hunting, looks like,” Seona said.
Lily’s mouth dropped open. “Ally? Why not Joseph?”
“Joseph usually does some needful thing for Willa’s family,” Ian explained, “before he and Matthew leave for their long hunt. This time it’s desks for Maggie’s school. He’s keeping his promise.”
Lily gazed at Joseph, who had laid the plank over sawhorses inside the shop and was speaking to Malcolm, who had stirred from his nap. “He’s a good brother,” she said, then turned when the collies barked.
Ally, outside the cabin with a bowl in hand, wolfing down his stew, was talking to Nip and Tuck between bites, telling them they had to stay put so he could go off with Matthew and learn to hunt. The news wasn’t going over well with either dog.
“I don’t think they’ve ever been parted from him,” Lily said. “We’re going to have to tie those dogs to keep them home.”
“Come on, babies,” Seona said as Ian swung Gabriel to his feet and Lily took up the water bucket. “Let’s go help Nip and Tuck be good dogs.”
She stood. Ian kissed her briefly, bent to ruffle Mandy’s hair, then went back to work. The rest trooped to Naomi’s cabin, Seona wondering what, if anything, Ally would bring back from his first hunting trip.
On his way into Shiloh to visit several patients in need of doctoring, Neil came out to Ian as he was looping Ruaidh’s reins over the MacGregors’ paddock fence. The early morning was made the darker for a bank of clouds promising rain. Neil hailed him from the porch, but upon reaching Ian, his smile faded. “There’s trouble in your look.”
“Where’s Matthew?” Ian asked.
“Gone back into the hills. Joseph’s saddling up to go fetch him. I’ve a patient to see else I’d be riding too.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Willa and I didna even see him last night after he and Ally returned, he was gone again so quick.” Neil paused, scrutinizing Ian. “Ally did come back?”
Ian nodded. “Ally’s fine. It’s only . . . I know why Matthew’s gone back out.”
“Hunting?” Neil asked hopefully.
“Not for meat.” And now Ian was kicking himself for not riding straight to Neil late last night after Ally confessed what he had seen on the ridge with Matthew.
It was past sundown before Ally returned, having learned to shoot the musket Matthew lent him but with nothing to show for it. It had been like pulling teeth to get that much from him. Then Ian had asked what proved the vital question, whether Matthew had made a kill. They had been out in the stable with only a pair of lanterns for light, but Ian had seen the sweat bead up on Ally’s forehead as he brushed Cupid, settling her for the night.
“Made a kill? Can’t say as he done that.”
Ian had stepped closer. “What did he do?”
Frowning at his big hand dwarfing the currying brush, Ally had worked his lips over his teeth, as if holding back words piling up on his tongue. “Mister Ian . . . I done promised.”
“Promised what?”
“To keep it secret.”
Alarm bells rang. “Ally, if there’s something going on with Matthew, ye’d best tell me.”
Ally’s gaze pleaded. “Matthew gonna be mad.”
“He can be mad at me because I need ye to tell me what’s going on.”
“Sound like maybe you know.”
“I’ve an idea. If I’m right, there’s danger here. For us all. Please, Ally.”
&nb
sp; In a rush of clear relief at the telling, Ally had spilled it all, and now Ian had to tell Matthew’s father.
“They came across a rough camp about a mile north of your boundary stone. Matthew made Ally stay back while he wrecked it. Slashed a canvas, some bedding. Bashed in a pot or two. Scattered everything. Matthew wouldn’t say whose camp it was. Not to Ally. Ye think it was Crane’s?”
“Of course it was,” Joseph said behind them, come from the stable in time to hear the tale. “Or Matthew thought so.”
“He’d do no such thing to anyone else’s camp.” Color rushed into Neil’s face and his jaw set hard. “The wee gomeral. He ought to have told us of it rather than provoking the man. What does he think he’s doing now?”
“Flushing him out,” Joseph said, his gaze on Ian. “It is not the worst idea, rather than waiting for Crane to make some move against one of us.”
Neil huffed in frustration. “And I canna even ride wi’ ye.”
“I’ll go,” Ian said, after weighing the need to get Crane in his sights against keeping his farm and family safe. Surely doing the first would best guarantee the latter. “Ally told me how to find the camp. If ye’ll have me,” he added to Joseph.
“I will,” the warrior said.
Before the portended rain fell, they found the ruined camp as Ally had described it. The better tracker, Joseph Tames-His-Horse scouted its edges while Ian waited with the horses, observing through the trees. The warrior moved with care, working his way outward around the camp’s periphery. Even without the destruction Matthew had overlaid, Crane—or whoever—had camped there long enough to trample the area with coming and going.
Finally Joseph found a fresh trail heading northward. Whose, Joseph couldn’t say. They followed it, leading their horses, Ian coming behind.
Having converged with one of the countless game trails crisscrossing the terrain, they were climbing slantwise up a wooded ridge when Joseph’s mare kicked loose a stone. It rolled to the trail’s edge, colliding with something that sprang out of the leaf mulch with startling violence. The dun mare shied on the slope, nearly losing its footing before Joseph calmed the animal.
Thinking it a snake, Ian called, “Are ye bit? Or the horse?”
Joseph crouched to run a hand over his horse’s foreleg before turning to see what the stone had disturbed. “Not a snake.”
Ian brought his horse forward and knelt, rifle planted on the trail. The thing lay there still, metal jaws closed. A sinister sight for all that. “Wolf trap.”
Rain began to fall. Fat drops pattered through the changing leaves of birch and maple, the needles of cedar and fir. One hit Ian’s hand, fisted around the rifle. While he covered the firing mechanism to protect it from the rain, Joseph took up a stick and scanned the ground around the sprung trap. Ian saw his gaze chill before he strode ahead a few paces and, with the stick, sprang a second trap set at the trail’s edge, where man or horse might in a moment have stepped.
“How did Matthew miss them?” Ian asked, still searching the ground.
“I know how—and where—Crane sets his traps,” said a voice above them.
Ian shot to his feet, holding tight to rifle and lead. Matthew MacGregor stood on the lip of the ridge, looking down at them. The noise of the rain had covered his approach. It was falling still, beading in their horses’ manes.
“I knew Ally wouldn’t keep it secret,” Matthew called. “Thought he’d last a bit longer than this.”
“I forced it from him,” Ian called back, looking for a way up to the lad, finding none Ruaidh could navigate. Little more than twice a man’s height, the ridge was nearly sheer, dangling the ends of roots where it wasn’t choked with browning ferns.
“You have seen Crane?” Joseph asked, cutting to the point. “Or are you only guessing these traps are his?”
“I haven’t, but I know it, Uncle.”
“What of Hector Lacey?” Ian asked, moisture hitting his lifted face. “He’s out in these hills living half-wild.”
“I thought of that,” Joseph said. “Lacey is in no shape for running a line unless that wounded foot has healed.”
“You know it’s Crane,” Matthew called down.
Joseph raised his gaze. “I know you are foolish to go after him alone!”
Even yards below, Ian could see Matthew’s jaw set. “I’m not doing this because I want to—not just. I was asked to do it, the day we buried Francis.”
“Colonel Waring?” Ian minded the conversation he and Neil had observed. “He asked ye to find Crane?”
“He did. And before you say it, Uncle, I know you and Pa told me to leave it be, but that’s as dangerous. For both our families,” Matthew added, including Ian in his indignant gaze. “Crane’s after your gold—or the gold he thinks you have. That’s why he’s back here.”
There was gold now. Ian had hidden it—not in the cabins nor in any structure on the farm. He had scouted the beech grove until he found one with a crevice near its base. After assuring himself it was no nesting creature’s home, he had placed the gold inside an old inkwell, corked it, wrapped that in oiled canvas, then put it inside the tree.
“That is not the only reason,” Joseph countered his nephew’s assertion. “You said yourself Francis saw him here last autumn. Crane did not follow this one to Cherry Valley, probably did not learn of his connection to Shiloh until spring.”
“So we surmise,” Matthew said. The rain was falling harder, darkening the shoulders of their hunting shirts. “Colonel Waring’s still eaten up with guilt over harboring the man, giving him work, never knowing what he was. He wants him found.”
“Did ye tell him it was Crane killed his son?” Ian asked.
“I told him what Francis said he saw. He reached the conclusion on his own. And so you know, Uncle, that trail you’re following doubles back in about a quarter mile. It’s a ruse.”
Joseph nodded, unsurprised. “A thing Crane would do. Have you found a better trail?”
“No. Just a few more traps like those.”
Joseph muttered something Ian missed with the rain’s swelling patter, then called to his nephew, “Find a safe way down so we need not shout.”
If the lad replied, Ian didn’t hear it. His mind had juddered to a halt on Just a few more traps like those. How many more were scattered over these hills? Were there any laid closer to their farms? A horrifying image of little legs clamped between bloody metal jaws made him weak-kneed with thankfulness that Gabriel and Mandy weren’t old enough to roam far. But anyone might step in such a trap laid on a well-used trail.
Ye canna see every trouble coming nor shield us from all suffering. No man can. Words spoken that morning filled his soul with dread rather than the comfort they were meant to convey.
Up early to ride to the MacGregors, he had led Ruaidh from the stable to find Malcolm wrapped in a quilt, sitting at a fire kindled in the yard. Unable to sleep, not wanting to disturb Ally and Naomi, he had come outside to read his Bible by firelight. Ian had given half an explanation for why he was off to their neighbors at such an hour—it was to do with Matthew.
Malcolm had merely nodded at that and dropped his gaze to his open Bible.
It had been too long since they read from the Scriptures together. Since Ian had even opened his Bible. “How far have ye gotten?”
“This morning I’m reading from Galatians.”
“I thought ye were deep in the Old Testament still. Never tell me ye’ve skipped ahead?”
“No.” Malcolm’s teeth gleamed in the firelight, while in the east the heavy-clouded sky was graying. “I’m reading both. Old Testament at night. New in the morning. Like God’s mercies.”
“Seems fitting.” Ian wondered if Malcolm was feeling pressed to hurry things along. “Would ye read me a bit, wherever ye happen to be?”
Malcolm tilted the Bible in knobby hands to catch the fire’s gleam, then shut the book. “I was setting a verse to memory. Let’s see have I got it. ‘Stand fast therefore in t
he liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with a yoke of bondage.’” He grinned. “That sounded right.”
“Bondage,” Ian echoed, searching the old man’s face, seamed with age and firelight.
“No’ the sort under which I once labored. To my thinking, Paul’s talking here about being justified by what a man does, rather than by faith in Christ Jesus. The bondage of works.”
What a man does. But a man had to do for his own. Didn’t Scripture also say a man who didn’t do so was worse than an unbeliever? Where did responsibility end and a yoke of bondage begin? Ian had grasped the saddle and nearly mounted, but an overwhelming heaviness stopped him.
“Pray for me, Malcolm,” he said.
Behind him Malcolm said, “That I do, daily. There something particular ye wanting me to speak wi’ the Almighty about this morning?”
He hadn’t told Malcolm about Aram Crane. Had Seona confided in him? If so, he had no need to explain. If not, he hadn’t the time. “I’m all but sure there is. Though it’s a muddle in my head just now.”
“That’s all right. The Almighty has it straight.” Ian had swung into the saddle before the old man said those words still haunting him now: “Ye canna see every trouble coming nor shield us from all suffering. No man can.”
But a man must see what he can and deal with it, he had argued silently on the ride to the MacGregors’. Hope that he had only imagined Aram Crane circling his family, a wolf beyond the firelight’s bleeding edge, had died. The man was out there, and he must deal with it.
When Ruaidh ruckled a breath, Ian looked up to see Matthew making his way down to them. Joseph had turned his horse back the way they had come and taken up the sprung traps. Careful where he stepped, Ian turned the roan back as well. “I’m heading home. Hunting traps on the way. What will ye do?”
Joseph secured the traps across his saddle. “The same—and tie that one to this horse if that is what it takes to bring him back with us.” He nodded at Matthew, coming along, scanning the ground, then held Ian’s gaze. “But soon you and I must hunt for more than traps.”