Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  Though he’d long since left the course of Mountain Laurel’s creek behind, the sun was setting when he heard the faint burble of another. He left the trail, guiding the sorrel down through hazel and bare-limbed ash, across a sandy crescent to the water. While the horse drank, he crouched to fill his canteen, scanning the bank by habit.

  A patch of sunlight showed the cloven prints of deer in the sand. The handlike impressions of a raccoon. No mark left by a woman’s slender foot. Or a man’s.

  He corked the canteen but didn’t rise. Nor did he glance at the saddlebag that held the crumpled letter, written in Thomas’s familiar scrawl:

  I hoped to find in you an Ally, as of old. But if ever we saw face-to-face, now it be through a Glass darkly. I mean to bring her away with the others. Leastwise she will have the Choice. Freedom, at a kinder Price than you exacted.

  Face and gut burning at memory of the words, Ian checked the priming pan before shouldering his rifle, then headed back up the wooded slope. It was hours since he’d passed the spot where Dawes had finally stopped to tend his horse’s shoe. The man wouldn’t be far.

  A quarter mile on he heard the clank of metal, perhaps a spoon against a pot. Smoke scented the chill air. He dismounted, rifle in hand, and led the sorrel forward until he spied the glow of flames.

  Dawes had camped below a rock outcrop that jutted from the forest like the wall of a castle ruin, its crumbling surface studded with lichen. A few yards from its base a fire licked at the underbelly of a pot hung from a tripod. The man’s horse grazed a short way off.

  The breeze shifted, carrying the aroma of salted pork on the boil. The sorrel, scenting something different and not to its liking, jerked its head with a violence that wrenched the lead from Ian’s grasp. As he lunged to recapture the panicked horse, he caught movement on the rock’s high lip, fifteen feet above Dawes’s head. The twitch of a tawny tail.

  It was the space of a heartbeat, his hesitation. In that space the catamount leapt.

  Ian let the sorrel go, swung the rifle to his shoulder, braced, and fired. Ears ringing, he plunged through fraying powder smoke to find Jackson Dawes laid out flat, the catamount sprawled atop him. The man’s barrel-sprung chest heaved beneath the animal’s inert weight. As Ian moved into his stunned field of vision, his voice came strangled with terror.

  “Get—get it off me!”

  “Hush your noise, man. It’s past harming ye.” With some regret at having thwarted nature’s course, Ian propped the rifle on a log set back from the fire, where the pot’s contents bubbled undisturbed.

  Ears to tail-tip, the catamount had to be eight feet long. Blood stained the animal’s neck a bright scarlet. Ian grasped a heavy foreleg above the elbow joint, preparing to roll it off Dawes. The animal’s scent enveloped him like a musky breath as his fingers dug through blood-slick fur, pressed into flaccid muscle, and met with a thumping pulse—an instant before what he’d thought a carcass revived to spitting, clawing life.

  Ian staggered backward, wrenched free his hunting knife, and made a desperate slash. The blade skidded through hide and muscle before a swipe of claws spun him to earth with an alarming strength. He landed facedown, inches from the fire, still clutching the blade. Pain seared his shoulder and he was on his back again. He twisted under the cat, scrabbling with the knife, seeking room to thrust. A maw opened wide, spiked with white. His fingers slipped beneath the cat’s jaw. For an instant its throat was bared. Ian drove the blade at it. Blood spurted, hot, salty. Still it had him, clawing, biting, silent in its killing.

  A musket cracked. Heat licked across his hip and the animal’s weight sagged.

  Ian heaved himself toward the flames, rolling the catamount into the coals, overturning the tripod and its contents in a searing tumult.

  Smells assaulted him first: spent powder, charred cloth, singed fur, the metallic tang of blood. Something had him by the legs, trying to drag him off. His body convulsed and he opened his eyes, wild with panic until he saw that Dawes had pulled him from the fire’s remains and was beating at his legs with a blanket. Ian tried to snatch it and nearly swooned. Pain knifed through his left arm and chest. Burns seared like a horde of stinging insects swarming over his legs. He might have been skewered to the earth for all he could move.

  “The cat?”

  Dawes released him, breathing hard. “You stuck it. We both shot it. Ain’t dead by now, it ain’t no natural painter-cat. Shrieked like a banshee into the wood after you rolled it through the fire—and my supper.”

  Bright pinpoints darted through Ian’s vision as he raised his head. The kettle lay on its side, contents smoking in the scattered embers. Dropping his head, he sucked in breath as pain washed him in fiery waves. He heard Dawes reloading the musket.

  “You’re bleeding fit to puddle. Can you sit?”

  Ian managed it, lip clamped between his teeth. Dawes’s musket ball had grazed his hip. The scoring it left seeped scarlet, but the blood soaking the torn left shoulder of his coat concerned him more. He hoped some of it was the cat’s.

  “Help me get this coat off.”

  Peeling away the heavy buckskin was torturous, and Dawes wasn’t gentle. The shirt beneath was saturated. Gingerly Ian pulled the shredded remains away from his flesh but couldn’t see the extent of the wounds in the failing light.

  Dawes dropped the ruined coat. “How bad is it?”

  Ian closed his eyes, fighting off a numbing swoon. “Nothing vital.”

  “Then I’ll see to the fire.”

  “Do that. And . . . my canteen.” Memory clenched him. Raising his head again, he made out a solitary dark shape: Dawes’s picketed mount. No sign of his uncle’s horse. “The sorrel . . . it spooked.”

  The overseer muttered oaths as the kettle was righted, embers raked, deadfall added until a fire blazed again.

  Bracing himself, Ian peeled away the damaged shirt and by firelight examined the cat’s work. His coat had absorbed some of the mauling. Still it was bad. Scratches ran in furrows from his collarbone down across his chest. Blood streamed where claws had snagged deep. A set of punctures high on his shoulder showed dark and round, but the bleeding there was less alarming than that of his left arm, gashed below the swell of the shoulder muscle. A tide of crimson flowed past his elbow, writhing in snakes to his wrist. He pressed his fingers to the lips of the gash. Blood seeped through unstanched.

  His heart gave a thump, then slammed against his rib cage. He swayed, banged the back of his head, and realized he was sitting nearly against the rock face. In tiny increments he shifted until the lichen-crusted stone supported him, while his vision spun—black, red, black again.

  “This’ll sting a mite.”

  Before Ian could speak, frigid water sluiced his arm and chest, running in a reddish gush to spatter his burnt breeches. The shock of it stole the breath for screaming. Fresh blood welled and streamed in the water’s wake.

  “Whisky,” Ian hissed when he could speak.

  Dawes stepped back, clutching the canteen. “Ain’t got none.”

  “Aye, ye do. Whisky—or whatever ye have. Now.”

  Dawes thumped down the canteen and produced a flask. Ian shut his eyes, bracing himself. “Pour some over the worst of it.”

  “Now that’s plain wasteful.”

  “Do it . . . or yours is the next throat I stick.”

  “I’m mighty feared,” Dawes said dryly but obliged.

  This time Ian did scream, muffled through clenched teeth. His next breaths came in gasps, as if he were drowning in the whisky’s honey-smoked fumes. Between them he rasped, “Bind my arm—use the shirt. Bind it tight.”

  The result was crude, but at least it drew the wound closed and lessened the bleeding, though the linen bloomed scarlet within seconds.

  “Reload my rifle.”

  His head fell back against the rock and he must have swooned. Next he knew, Dawes was dropping a blanket over his battered torso. The overseer laid the rifle across his burned thighs and mumbl
ed what sounded like “Going for the dang-blamed sorrel,” before stumping off into the trees.

  Ian roused again—he’d no notion how much later—to see Dawes leading the sorrel into camp. A huge carcass, golden in the firelight, draped the saddle.

  “Is the horse sound?” His voice cracked, coarse as scuffed gravel.

  “Scratched a mite. Found the painter-cat too—dead.” Dawes rolled the carcass into the firelight, challenge in his eyes. “I shot it last.”

  It took a moment for Ian’s brain to process the implication: Dawes wanted the scalp bounty. Nodding curtly, he groped for the rifle, which had slipped while he dozed. He dragged it back across his legs. When his bags and bedroll landed beside him, he forced his eyes to focus on his uncle’s overseer, his brain on why he’d tracked the man.

  “What are ye doing out here, Dawes?”

  Firelight caught the startlement on the man’s rough-hewn features, hastily quenched. He jerked at the ties of Ian’s bedding and rolled it out. “Trailing runaways, what else?”

  “Why here?”

  “There was sign they come this way.”

  Beneath the blanket Ian’s limbs shook, from shock as much as cold. “What sign?”

  “They was anxious to get off quick. Left prints that dumb buck Ally could’ve followed.”

  “I’ve seen no tracks.” He’d not seen so much as a toe-print to confirm the direction Dawes had been hunting.

  “Rain washed ’em out. But I met a farmer said he drove two runaways off his place. Bedding down in his corncrib, they was.”

  A lie. But the knowledge didn’t prevent the jolt to Ian’s heart at the mental picture the words created. Dawes retreated to his side of the camp. Ian began the excruciating process of lying down. “Ye met . . . a farmer . . . ye say?”

  “That’s right. Back a ways, near that cart track. You’d have crossed it today. Man said the buck he chased off was dark-skinned and the woman looked near white. Lots of hair . . . pretty thing.” Dawes coughed and spat into the dark. “Took to her own kind in the end, huh?”

  Ian fought back bile as his grazed hip took his weight. There was truth mixed in the lies. There had been a cart track. No knowing if there had been a farmer. Rifle cradled in the crook of his uninjured arm, he raised his head. Above him stars shone through a webbing of branches, brittle and cold. He closed his eyes. “There is no trail.”

  Across the fire, Dawes cursed. “I lost it, all right? Come the morning I aimed to backtrack.”

  Ian’s eyelids flickered. “Come the morning . . . we head back to Mountain Laurel. Ye’re off the hunt.”

  If there had ever been one.

  “Reckon when there’s light enough we’ll see,” Dawes muttered after a prickling silence.

  While his uncle’s overseer broke camp in the gray dawn, Ian secured the blood-stiffened quilled coat behind the sorrel’s saddle, pulled a blanket over his shoulders, and fumbled for a grip with his right hand. He could feel the heat coming off his mauled flesh. Though there was plenty light enough to see the wounds now, he couldn’t bring himself to unwind the makeshift binding. The worst of the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

  “Can you ride?” Dawes asked, the first he’d spoken since rising.

  Ian mounted the horse one-handed and settled in the saddle, jaw clenched against the pain bursting stars across his vision. “I can. Let’s start.”

  He’d slurred the words, but he stayed upright.

  The day commenced cold. The rising sun did little to warm it. The first real bite of winter since October’s snow had clamped down in the night, making the breath of man and horse condense like smoke. Pain spiked with every jar of the horse beneath him. A drumbeat throbbed behind his eyes.

  He collapsed to his knees when they dismounted to camp in the lee of a pine-clad slope.

  Dawes watered the horses at a stream, while Ian stumbled to the saddlebags. The bindings had worked loose, exposing his wounds. Some bled afresh. Others gave off a fouler seepage. The flesh surrounding the deepest gash had swollen, tight and red. The gash itself emitted a sickly smell. He tied the crusted linen around his wounds as best he could manage.

  The following morning he mounted again but rode for long stretches half-blind to the trail that skirted wooded ridges or crossed open stretches cut by ice-rimed rivulets. When he jerked back to clarity, it was to blazing pain, sickening weakness, and despair. Seona and Thomas would be miles away, their trail cold.

  When the sorrel stumbled, jolting him half out of the saddle, he hauled himself upright but lost the blanket. It slid to the ground and was left behind. No matter. He was so warm. . . .

  Ahead Dawes’s slouch hat blurred. Ian’s head rocked forward with a snap. He clenched his knees to stay upright but it was no good. The sky heaved and the earth came crashing up.

  The air was gone out of him. He was sprawled beside the sorrel’s hooves, eyes full of hurrying cloud, until the face of Jackson Dawes blotted out the view. His heartbeat juddered. Pain reached for him. Bleeding onto the red Carolina clay, he closed his eyes and let the dark tide pull him under.

  29

  Fire raged in his flesh. In his bones. Voices spoke and shadows moved beyond the burning veil. A cup rim touched his lips; trickles of water briefly quenched the flame. Then he burned again.

  And again.

  At last he woke, no longer burning, but with a bruising weight on his chest. His mind dredged up a word for the weight. Saddle. Had he fallen from a saddle? Had a saddle fallen on him?

  Awareness that he was abed took on substance. He was under a roof. There was no saddle. With that realization he expected the weight to lift. When it didn’t, he longed to let it press him down into oblivion, preferring the fire. Memory had awakened. It tore at him like a hungry raven, eating at his vitals.

  “Seona.” It came out a rasp, half-buried in the sweat-soured pillow on which he lay.

  “Hush, Mister Ian.” A whisper in his ear. A touch on his hand. “I ken ye loved my girl-baby, but hush now.”

  Loved? He had. Did. Would always. But had Seona loved him? Had she done anything at all without his leading?

  The answer welled like blood from a wound, spilling into a gulf of doubt.

  Others were in the room. A murmur separated into his cousins’ voices. He moved his head, opened his eyes, saw them in the doorway.

  “He’s waking,” Judith said.

  “With you hovering over him like a mama hen,” Rosalyn replied.

  “You may have a turn. I didn’t think you wished it.”

  “He has you and Lily—and we all know he’s had Seona. What need has he of me?”

  Ian turned his face from them. His left arm was bound to his side, keeping it immobile. He clutched at Lily with his free hand, ignoring the pain the movement caused. Words ground out of him, broken things. “What would ye have me do? Tell me, Lily, and I swear I—”

  “Ian? We’ve been terribly anxious.”

  Judith’s face swam into view. Lily’s hand slid from his grasp. “Judith. How long . . . ?”

  “Since Dawes brought you home?” Judith asked. “Eight days.”

  Eight. Seona was a fortnight gone. A fortnight free. Was that all she wanted in the end, to be free? Or free of him?

  They’d touched each other’s souls—he knew they had—spun between them the merest thread of connection. Then he’d rushed in with his passion and his outrage, trampling that fragile filament without knowing what he did. He’d cajoled, persuaded, promised—taking what he wanted, convincing himself she gave it freely. That she wanted it too. Truth opened beneath him like a pit. Seona hadn’t loved him. She’d obeyed him.

  Water poured. Turning dull eyes, he saw Judith tipping pitcher to cup. Lily wasn’t in the room now. Had he dreamt her?

  Judith propped him up and arranged the pillows behind him. He was naked beneath the covers. As he settled back gingerly, taking the cup in his free hand, he saw her cheeks were aflame at this sickbed intimacy.

  “Is th
ere news?” he asked.

  “Not that we’ve heard. Papa Hugh hasn’t let Mr. Dawes go looking again.”

  “Dawes?” He’d taken a sip of water. It choked him going down. “He wasn’t sent packing?”

  Judith took the cup from his unresisting hand. “Mr. Dawes swears he never touched Seona. The field hands lied.”

  Ian swore. Judith flinched. He didn’t care.

  “Judith, will ye help me?”

  She colored bright again, glancing at the room’s chamber pot. “Do you need—? Lily usually . . .”

  “Not that. I need to get to Hillsborough.”

  She straightened, no longer mortified but alarmed. “Ian, you mustn’t leave your bed again. It’s only been a day since you tried. That’s why Lily bound your arm.” When he stared at her blankly, she said, “Jubal found you sprawled in the stable with a saddle on your chest. Don’t you remember?”

  There had truly been a saddle? Aye . . . he minded it now. Like a fractured dream. He’d left his room in the gray of dawn, barefoot and half-clothed, determined to ride for Hillsborough, to search out the Quaker, Benjamin Eden. Or that had been his fever-muddled plan. He’d made it to the stable unobserved, managed to lead Ruaidh from the stall, but hadn’t been able to lift the saddle. A fresh realization gripped him.

  “Today, Judith—what is the date?”

  “The eighteenth November.”

  The General Assembly session had passed. Had his uncle bothered petitioning? Did it matter now? A growl of frustration caught in his throat.

  Judith hovered, fretful. “Ian—are you in pain? Shall I call Lily back?”

  From downstairs came the clink of cutlery. The table being laid, for what meal he’d no notion. The gray light at the window might have been dawn or dusk.

  He stared at his hand, splayed on the counterpane. The fever had wasted more than his time. He felt frail. Exhaustion reached for him as he spoke. “There’s someone I know in Hillsborough. A Quaker. He may have helped them.” Though he hadn’t said their names, his cousin’s expression grew pained. “What is it ye’re not telling me, Judith?”