An Uncommon Woman

by Laura Frantz

  Did she mind? He deflected the stab of guilt her words wrought. At his continued silence, she took the Windsor chair across from him, the curved back arching above her head, she was so tiny. A Swan trait?

  To his surprise, she uncorked a jug and poured them both a drink. “You’re liable to need this if you’re to last.”

  Liquid fire. Once down, the whiskey spread in a languorous stream to all the saddle-sore parts of him. But it did not quell his noisy stomach. He forked a bite of ham, swallowed, and said, “How long you been here?”

  “In this very valley since ’55.” Her pointed chin rose proudly. “Carolina before that. Came overmountain with my nephew, who was killed by savages a while back at the Buckhannon ferry.”

  One good man gone then. “My condolences. Mention was made of the Swans at Fort Pitt, along with the Schoolcrafts and Clendennins.”

  “None finer.” She downed the corn whiskey in two swallows without a sputter.

  “What do you know of the Braams?” he queried between bites.

  She studied the wall behind him without focus. “Good Dutch stock. Comeliest daughters I ever saw. The oldest was took by Indians long ago. I recollect the Braams mostly because the daughter they lost was with my niece that sorry day.”

  “Your niece wasn’t taken?”

  A slow shake of her head and again that faraway look. “Out picking strawberries, the both of them. Bosom friends. Seems to me there was a third girl. I forget her name. The Braams’ daughter got ahead of them, and then like lightning she was gone.”

  “And her kin?”

  “Took it awful hard. Some folks would rather their kin be killed than took. Soon after, the Braams abandoned their homeplace. Don’t know what became of them.”

  The food now seemed a tad tasteless. He’d wanted more for Keturah Braam than an abandoned homestead. This new hitch brought disappointing complications.

  “I suppose the missing Braam girl is now the flax-haired woman you rode in with.” It was a statement, not a question. “My eyes may be dim but my ears aren’t. Word got round right quick that she looked familiar.”

  Before he could reply, Jude darkened the doorway, Maddie in his wake. “Just got your supper summons from Cutright. Got enough to share?”

  Clay looked to the frying pan, still half full, and motioned them in. Jude gave a low whistle of appreciation while Maddie perused the unfamiliar blockhouse. Clay made introductions, the name Swan easily remembered.

  “Miss Braam’s sleepin’,” Maddie told him quietly.

  He took an extra plate and saved a portion for Keturah along with two corncakes. The tall stack hardly dwindled. Hester Swan left with a brisk farewell. Was she being compensated for her cooking? Another question to settle. But Keturah Braam was foremost on his mind.

  “Appears Miss Braam’s kin left these parts after she was taken,” he said, “and I’ve yet to discover where to.”

  Maddie’s face fell, but a famished Jude only looked up from his plate to reach for the salt cellar.

  “Where does that leave her till you figure out what to do next?” Maddie asked.

  Clay pondered his answer.

  “She won’t tolerate the fort long, living free like she’s been,” Jude said as he chewed. “A fort is naught but a cage to an Indian.”

  “And all those white eyes.” Maddie knew firsthand what it was like to be an outsider. Though free, she wasn’t always treated so and often chafed against a fort’s narrow confines herself.

  “Once I put out the call to muster the militia tomorrow, I’ll take Miss Braam out to her old homeplace and start there.” Why he’d start there Clay couldn’t explain. It was bound to be emotional for her if any of her childhood memories remained or resurfaced, not to mention the absence of her white kin. “Care to come along?”

  “I’ll join you,” Maddie answered without pause.

  “Till the forenoon then.”

  8

  They rode out under a ten o’clock sun that promised to melt them by noon. Keturah Braam was abreast of him, Maddie behind. Clay sensed the Dutch captive’s relief to be beyond fort walls. It matched his own. Out here they escaped the rising stench of the fort’s privy pits and the manure-laden livestock pens, a potent combination in the May heat, and breathed deeply of the forest-cleansed air.

  Now, in late spring, the lush woods were at full frolic before starting a slow slide toward autumn. It didn’t take long for Keturah to slip from her unsaddled mare and gather a palmful of early strawberries. She extended a hand, offering the first pickings to Clay, a smile on her berry-stained lips.

  How could he refuse? He thanked her in both English and Lenape, popping the offering in his mouth. Next to marrow bones slow roasted around a campfire on a cold winter’s day, strawberries—summer’s best fruit—were his favorite food.

  Maddie soon dismounted and joined Keturah while he stayed atop his horse, rifle resting in the crook of one arm, gradually getting his bearings in new territory.

  Joseph Cutright had told him the whereabouts of the Braam cabin, but they were in no hurry to get there. He’d kept quiet about their destination, and now Keturah had turned it into a strawberry-picking expedition.

  “Do you know the legend?” he asked her in Lenape.

  She looked over at him, her hands busy with the berries. “How the Great Spirit made the first man and woman, and they quarreled? The woman ran away and the man could not catch her.”

  Surprised by her wealth of words, Clay tamped down his desire to hurry. “To help him, the Great Spirit created a patch of strawberries, hoping to delay her. She stopped and ate this new fruit, and finally the man caught up to her and said he was sorry.”

  Keturah nodded. “They called the fruit heart berry because it is shaped like a heart and reunited them forever.”

  “Tehim,” he said, resurrecting the old word. “Strawberry.”

  He studied her as she remounted her mare. Had she no angst about the day she was taken, picking berries as she’d been? Mayhap she’d forgotten that or refused it entry.

  She looked at him, a curious light in her eye. “Someday you must tell me your own story. And why you speak the Lenape tongue so well.”

  He said nothing to this, kneeing Bolt forward.

  It took an hour of dense woods, two creeks, a thorny tangle of grapevine, and a bear sighting before they reached what looked to be the border of the Braams’ deserted homestead.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Clay watched Keturah’s expression. Placid as a doe’s. At least till they got in sight of the cabin. In the noon glare, all the abandonment lay exposed. Every overturned cart, barrel, and rusted hinge. The sagging springhouse roof. A lightning-split hickory crushing a corncrib. All told that the Braams had been gone a long time.

  Once again Keturah slid off her mare and began a slow walk to the well. She knelt there by the tumbled stones, eyes on the grass as if searching for something.

  Maddie came abreast of Clay, her words more whisper. “Reckon we should follow?”

  “Best let her go first.” He looked to the pommel of his saddle, the downward slant of his felt hat cutting the sun’s glare but turning his hairline itchy.

  Something about the scene was too tender to witness. Half of him was glad she’d returned to ghosts. Betimes an actual reunion was too much to bear.

  “What did McKee say happened to her Indian family?” Maddie asked him. “Before she was brought in to Pitt?”

  “Something about disease cutting half the tribe down.” He watched a ring snake slither away beneath a rotted stump. “Notice the old scars on her throat and arms? My guess is she survived the disease as a child before living with the Lenape, then lost her Indian family to it not so long ago.”

  “I wondered why she’s not put up a fight to rejoin the Indians. She seems surrendered to coming back here.”

  “So far, aye.”

  After a few minutes Maddie dismounted, intent on the cabin. Keturah had set foot on the porch but made no mov
e to open the cabin door. What would she find? Moreover, what would doing so unleash?

  Clay’s gaze dissected the surrounding woods for any untoward movement. He blinked, eyes stinging from lack of sleep in an ill-fitting bed. Since his captivity he’d preferred the ground, a cushion of moss or leaves beneath him.

  At first light he’d met with the fort’s four spies, needing to add to their number. Scouting was an unenviable job. He’d gotten his start spying at Fort Henry under General Amherst years ago.

  Veering away from that sore mental trail, he pondered telling Keturah his story as she’d asked. Rarely did he unearth it, letting his past gather dust and fall into disuse like the Braams’ homestead. Most folks didn’t understand the path he’d trod. Or didn’t want to.

  The women went into the cabin, Maddie leading. Keturah hovered on the threshold for a few indecisive seconds. Maddie was a godsend even if she didn’t speak Lenape. In her quiet way, she’d begun teaching—rather, reminding—Keturah of simple English words. Soap. Bowl. Milk. Corn.

  A flicker of movement by a laurel to his left snagged his eye. A sun-dappled fox was all it amounted to. His shoulders relaxed though his mind stayed wary. The last spate of trouble, Cutright told him, started near the Buckhannon ferry last month. Two clashing tribes. One brave killed. The fort was briefly besieged after that by a small party of Wyandot, leaving one settler with a shattered elbow but no fatal wounds. Since then, nary a whiff of unrest, though Indian sign continued to be plentiful.

  Keturah and Maddie emerged into the sunlight. The cabin door closed. Keturah lingered at the well again, picking up the water pail severed from its rope as if wondering how it happened to be so. Finally, they were on their way again, Keturah looking lost in thought.

  “Where to now?” Maddie asked Clay.

  “Closest neighbor—Swans. Their land borders the river.”

  Mightn’t Keturah remember her former neighbors?

  Their horses went at a walk, Clay intent on giving her ample time to adjust to her former surroundings. Once the Swan homestead spread before them, Keturah’s expression seemed unchanged. Or did he note a faint flicker of recognition?

  Unlike the Braams’, all was order and industry here. Corn thriving ankle high in the surrounding fields. A cabin clearing free of stumps, with half a dozen sturdy outbuildings at first glance, including a new stable. A large fenced garden patch in colorful array to the south. Not just any house but a fortified blockhouse on the west end of a handsome cabin. Most surprising of all was the stone springhouse, the equal of any he’d seen in the east. Swan Station, Cutright had called it. The place looked to have been along the Buckhannon for some time.

  They rode in slowly but had already been seen. A great many noises set up at once. A hog grunted noisily and a chicken squawked. The aproned woman coming out of the cabin made a beeline toward them while a bewhiskered young man emerged from a smithy, leather apron tied about his lean waist, red-faced from a small forge fire. His hammering had been heard a ways off.

  Clay slid his rifle into its pouch and dismounted to the woman’s greeting. “Colonel Tygart?”

  “Aye, Tygart,” Clay replied. “And company.”

  “Welcome then. You’re the talk of the border here lately. I’m the widow Swan.” Her gracious manner warmed him. He didn’t miss the start of surprise in her eyes when her gaze fixed on the former captive. He held his peace, waiting for recognition to kindle and confirm one of the Braams was truly among them.

  “Keturah?” Uncertainty framed her words. “Heaven be praised! Can it be?” Mistress Swan took a tentative step toward her, a wealth of emotion in her tanned face. “So long it’s been, yet you look the same, only taller. Like your ma.”

  Her poignant words narrowed Clay’s attention, yet he didn’t miss the gawking men now in their midst, all in varying degrees of befuddlement. The Swan brothers he’d heard about?

  Mistress Swan enfolded Keturah in a plump, homespun embrace once she’d dismounted. And the single, inexplicable tear Clay had witnessed at Fort Pitt faded to the far reaches as Keturah cracked open like a broken water pitcher.

  “Watch your hide,” Ross cautioned as Tessa left the river, trading her setting pole for a small willow basket.

  Up at first light, she’d accompanied Ross, glad few folks needed ferrying since her mind was set on berrying. Strawberries were abundant this year, bits of scarlet amid the sun-stroked, loamy places. Telltale white blooms promised a good gathering. Never mind if winter-starved deer got there first or the ruby gems had been bird-pecked in places. Such creatures helped scatter the seed.

  Her gait was light as she neared home. Her gun she’d left behind at the ferry house. The heavy rifle was an encumbrance, but she’d catch what for from her brothers for her carelessness. Yet sooner or later she must set it aside much like they did when plowing and sowing and doing their many chores.

  A peaceable hour passed. Sweat-spackled, her belly and basket full, she came into the cabin clearing. Odd how a body was ill prepared for the most heart-wrenching surprises. No warning hullabaloo. No shadowy feeling. Just a rare lull about the cabin. What had made her brothers abandon their pressing tasks at midday? Had it something to do with the three strange horses grazing around the springhouse?

  Voices floated to her across the empty clearing. Most she knew. One was distinct in cadence and tone, a manly volley of English and . . . Indian?

  Basket dangling from one arm, she pushed open the cabin door. All her brothers but Ross were gathered around the table. The man at the head, occupying Pa’s place, was one she’d never laid eyes on, as was the black woman to his left. Ma sat with her back to the door in her usual place, unnervingly close to a woman whose pale braid snaked down her slender back.

  The woodsy giant was the first to acknowledge her, his gaze swiveling to Tessa as she hovered in the doorway. As it wasn’t his house, he didn’t motion her in.

  “Tessa . . .” Jasper spoke in the sudden lull as she entered.

  Mindlessly, Tessa set the berries aside.

  “Best sit down,” Cyrus said, voice full of portent. “Your long-lost friend has come back to us.”

  The braided woman turned, delft-blue eyes searching. Disbelief struck Tessa like a blow.

  Keturah?

  Her old friend sat before her, once a mere bud of a girl, now blossomed into a full-blown flower of a woman. Keturah . . . who once taught her to write her name . . . who made a game out of chasing deer from the fields . . . who sang like a bird . . . who always called her lieverd . . . who stuffed tow linen in her ears at the firing of the fort guns . . . who kept all Tessa’s secrets and laughed with her like no one since.

  Emotion tightened her throat. No greeting could she give that fit the mighty chasm that time and distance had wrought. Yet every eye was upon her, willing her to do something.

  Coming from behind, Tessa opened her arms and embraced her old friend. Smoke and earthiness suffused her senses instead of the milky, sugar-laced scent of before.

  The conversation resumed around her, none of it answering her needling questions. She sought the open seat between Zadock and Lemuel while Keturah turned around again as easily as if she’d never left. The lively talk was hard to track till her surprise simmered down. Scraps about the militia. Fort spies. Enemy sign. Provisions. Gun powder and bullet lead.

  They seemed to skirt the heart of the matter, that Keturah Braam was here, had come back to them, was at their very table. Another discreet glance told her that Keturah was worn. Spent. The slight sag of her features might be called resigned. And her cheeks bore the faintest imprint of dried tears, the dust of the trail marking their downward course.

  Was this strapping tree of a man Keturah’s husband? Though seated, he was a full head taller than her brothers. And not nearly as loose-lipped.

  “Why, without any kin close at hand, she’ll stay right here,” Ma was saying. “Just us women in the cabin. The men keep mostly to the blockhouse when they’re not in the field
s or at the ferry.”

  Murmurs of affirmation went round. Finally, Tessa snapped to. The tense tickle in her middle nearly erupted into a laugh at the sight of her brothers’ barely restrained glee. She swallowed all mirth while the man at the head of the table looked straight at Keturah and spoke Indian again.

  So, they weren’t wed? Was he asking Keturah where she wanted to be? Penned up at the fort or with the Swans along the spacious Buckhannon? The cabin stilled again. Keturah answered in the dulcet voice Tessa remembered, though the words were gibberish. Somehow it hurt her that she couldn’t understand her former friend yet this tall stranger could. And how was it that a white man could speak Indian so well?

  “Seems our company manners have fled, what with all the excitement,” Ma said, looking from the stranger to Tessa. “Colonel Tygart, this is my only daughter, Tessa Swan.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” he replied as Tessa inclined her head to acknowledge the introduction.

  All her expectations and presumptions collapsed in a disheartening heap. Was this truly Colonel Clayton Tygart or some buckskinned imposter? He was not at all like she’d expected. Nothing like she’d hoped.

  She studied him beneath lowered lashes, but the shadows in the cabin were too deep even in daylight to grasp hold of him. All she knew was that he was tall and as soot-haired as Keturah was fair.

  They were locked out of the conversation for several more moments as he spoke to Keturah. And then he said in plain King’s English, “She will stay.”

  9

  Clay moved toward Bolt, who’d mowed down the tallest grass around the Swans’ springhouse and was now eyeing the sweet timothy by the smokehouse. Maddie lingered with Keturah and Mistress Swan in the cabin while the brothers returned to their work.

  Belly full of mincemeat pie and coffee, he’d formed a pleasant association at first meeting, given all the Swan brothers would muster with the militia. The youngest, Ross, was absent but just as eager, they said. All in all, a satisfying day’s work, mayhap the most important matter being Keturah’s settling till her kin could be found.