An Uncommon Woman

by Laura Frantz

  “In time. But first I—” He was still looking at her, the warmth in his voice another caress. “I want to hear you say my name.”

  “Well, fancy that. I’ve always wanted to call you Clay, Clay.”

  He smiled then, the broadest she’d yet seen, his teeth strikingly white in his deeply tanned face. He even looked a bit bashful, as if this was all new and untried, like a first dance or a new suit of clothes.

  The sun ducked behind a cloud, and she gestured to a bench beneath the shade of a chestnut. “Care to sit?”

  She stored her baskets in the nearby shed, then returned to find he’d sat down, when she’d expected he’d head straight to the fields. Now every thought in her head emptied. She took a seat beside him, so close her skirts brushed his leg.

  “You missing Keturah?” he asked, resting his rifle across his knees.

  “Nary a minute goes by that I don’t think of her.” Though I think of you more.

  “They should have reached the Tuscarawas by now.”

  Should have. No promises.

  “How will we ever know?” she wondered aloud.

  “Pay them a call at some peaceful juncture in future.”

  “So far,” she lamented. “A hundred miles or better?” With you, I’d brave it. Especially if we went east.

  “A day’s walk, aye,” he said.

  Her smile was wry. “You’ve got sturdier moccasins than I.”

  “Beautiful country. Takes the tired right out of you.”

  She looked to her lap, smoothing a crease in her apron. “Still no word from her kin?”

  “Nay. There might be none. I believe she’ll be more content with the Moravians.”

  She swallowed. Dared. “How was it for you when you were taken and returned?”

  A pause. “Harsh.”

  She waited for more, his one-word answers wearing a discontented hole in her. “You never speak of it . . .”

  “I favor the Lenape custom of not discussing the dead.” Even though they sat talking quietly, his gaze made a repeated sweep of the clearing and edges of the forest. “Let the past stay in the past.”

  His simple explanation only stoked her curiosity, the yearning to know more, to tread the untraveled, untrammeled parts of him.

  “I felt the same after Pa died. But I find it helps not to skirt around him, not tread too carefully. I want to remember, if only the good.”

  “I’d like to have met him.” He traced the scrolled engraving on his rifle’s brass mountings with a callused forefinger. “Which of your brothers is most like him?”

  “Ross,” she said without thought. “Pa rarely spoke a surly word. He stayed on the sunny side. Ross is the same.”

  “And you? Or are you a bit waspish like Hester?”

  “You tell me,” she replied, raising her chin to look at him.

  “I could put you to the test, as Daniel Boone did with Rebecca.”

  “What means you?”

  “He mislaid his hunting knife and made a tear in her cambric apron.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Aye, to try her temper.”

  “The rascal!”

  “Nary a complaint did she make.”

  “I’d likely have stayed a spinster.”

  His low chuckle lent to her warm skin. “You might have mimicked Hester, aye. But as it stands, there’s hope.”

  “Hope?”

  His decisive nod ensnared her further. She couldn’t look away, captured by his face in profile with all its handsome lines and angles, the heavily fringed lashes, darker even than his charcoal hair.

  “I know a man who’s right fond of you.”

  Surprise pinched her. “And who might that be?”

  He hesitated as if trying to collect the details. “New to the settlement. Stands over six feet tall. Not much to look at—”

  “Says who?”

  “Hester,” he returned with another chuckle. “But he’s a quick study. From parts east. Outshoots any gun along the Buckhannon, if not the border.”

  “I’d be pleased to meet him.”

  “All right then.” He pulled himself to his feet, rifle dangling from a large hand, leaving her hanging just like he’d done after that muster-day kiss.

  Reaching out, she took his other hand in her own and gave it a little squeeze before releasing it reluctantly. “Give him my regards then.”

  He smiled down at her before retrieving his hat in the grass. It looked in need of a good washing, though the rest of him was tidy, his once-bewhiskered jaw smooth as newly tanned buckskin. “Better hie to the fields.”

  Jasper was approaching in the distance, the ball of a two o’clock sun behind him. Clay turned his back on her. Called his horse. She had no clue as to when she’d see him again. Here was ample opportunity to stake his claim, yet . . .

  “What are you afraid of, Clay?” she called after him.

  He swung round, pinning her with that startling gaze. “You been talking to Maddie?”

  “Nay,” she said. What did Maddie have to do with it?

  Touching his hat brim as if signaling an end to the conversation, he kept on, pausing briefly to speak to Jasper on his way.

  “Is there a wedding in the offing, little sister?” Jasper said once Clay was out of earshot.

  She stared at Clay’s back. “Hardly.”

  “Well, Ma may have a suitor, if you don’t.”

  She followed him to the barn, bemused. “Where is Ma?”

  “At the edge of the cornfield, courting.” He sunk his axe into a chopping block. “Old Eb.”

  “The widower Westfall? I wondered why she was tarrying in the fields.”

  Jasper seemed pleased. “A worthy match.”

  Worthy in the sense that Westfall owned more acreage than any in the valley, maybe, and served as county magistrate. Jasper was all pounds and pence and position.

  She left the barn and returned to the cornfield to find Ma indeed in Westfall’s company beneath a spreading sycamore tree. And Clay with them to boot. Such sent her scurrying back to the cabin and Jasper, wondering if Westfall would join them for supper.

  Though it was hours away, the venison needed tendering on the spit outside, the corn with the husks left on to roast in the ashes. She chopped potatoes with a vengeance, her brisk movements making short shrift of the work.

  Sure enough, near five o’clock, Westfall stood at their door. “Miss Tessa.” He removed his hat, revealing a full head of white hair despite his sixty years. “Your ma asked me to supper.”

  Tessa wiped her hands on her apron and welcomed him in. Would Clay follow? Hope barely crested before disappointment swept in. Ma appeared, toting a piggin of milk, Ross following. He winked at her, clearly enjoying the turn of events. She’d paid it little mind when Ma had paired with the widower for a reel or two at the frolic, but truly, the matter begged pondering.

  Westfall quietly took Pa’s place. Tessa felt a twinge. The head of the table usually sat empty, though after Pa passed she’d had a hard time breaking her habit of setting his place, then whisking away the fork and spoon and tankard amid her tears.

  Six men now ringed the long table once again, she and Ma serving. Talk centered upon the harvest, the usual tittle-tattle of the settlement when folks got together. This was no doubt a novel supper for the childless Westfall, surrounded by the Swan brood. Tessa said little, content to listen and try to make sense of the events of her own unforeseen afternoon as well as Ma’s newfound courtship.

  With a telling glance at his sister, Zadock picked up his fork and commenced eating. “I thought Colonel Tygart would join us.”

  Jasper shook his head, sparing Tessa an explanation. “Tygart had matters to see to upriver.”

  Wed to the fort, he was, and rightfully so for the betterment of the settlement. She tucked her disappointment away and smiled as Ma served bowls of apple tansy brimming with cream. To their amusement, at Westfall’s leave-taking Ma disappeared with him into the moonlit night.

/>   Once the door shut, Ross’s whisper rocked them all. “Reckon he’ll try to kiss her?”

  Lemuel shook with silent laughter. “He’d be a fool not to.”

  “Likely Pa’s turning in his grave,” Zadock sputtered around his pipe.

  “Pa, my eye.” Cyrus snorted. “What about Mistress Westfall? In her eternity box but six months!”

  With a wink, Jasper brought an end to their merriment as Ma came back into the cabin, cheeks rosy as pippin apples. If ever a woman looked like she’d been kissed . . .

  Tessa began clearing the table amid the aroma of pipe smoke as plans were made for the morrow’s work. At last the cabin settled and she climbed atop her thin mattress, lying on her back and staring at the high rafters. Try as she might, she couldn’t nod off, couldn’t even keep her mind on Clay. Summer thunder growled, threatening the ongoing harvest. She preferred the gentle spring peepers and warm rain. The brittle rustle of wind in the autumn leaves. Even the perfect stillness of a winter snowfall.

  Tonight all creation seemed to groan, as Scripture said. The wolves especially made a terrible night music. She listened to their howls, haunting and otherworldly. That shadowy feeling that had overtaken her earlier at the well returned. Something felt different, some strange, cold force pressing in on all sides of them.

  God, help us. Spare us. Please.

  23

  Clay struck the soil with a shovel, driving the pointed end hard past rock and weeds to overturn one too many graves. Eight—nay, nine. He miscounted then recounted, gorge rising in his throat. Seven children, one of them but a fortnight old. Smoke from the ashes of the cabin and outbuildings writhed and purled in the night, turning everything a dull charcoal gray. That overwhelming burnt smell was one he’d never gotten used to since the firing of the Tygart homestead when he was a boy. It smelled of heartache and despair then and now.

  He tried not to look at the still, lifeless faces or the stricken men who’d helped with the Swans’ harvest and come here. Other neighbors gathered, Jasper and Cyrus included, each overcome with varying emotions, namely outrage. It hung as thick as the smoke in the air. Silent to a man, they wrapped the bodies in quilts and sheets, burying the baby with his mother.

  By the fifth grave, someone brought Clay a drink from a flask. He tasted blackberry juice. Vinegar. Sugar. It steadied him, eased his protesting arms and shoulders. At last he threw down the shovel and removed his hat, angling it over his sore heart, his mind empty. Around him stood a knot of somber men, rightly fretful about their own unguarded homeplaces, their heads bowed while others stood open-eyed, rifles ready.

  He had no idea what he prayed, only that he said the words with urgency, aware these men needed to be on their way to bring their own families to the fort. He’d sent fort spies on a dangerous chase to relay the woeful news to other outlying settlers and stations.

  Leaving Swan Station near dusk, he had ridden here with Jude. Tomorrow was the day assigned the guard to help the Clendennins harvest their corn. Clay had wanted to make sure they were ready, to plan for the morrow. They’d arrived to this.

  Never had Clay been so glad for Jude’s presence. They went from charred cabin to smokehouse to springhouse, making sure the flames did not leap to the woods and set them afire. The Indians had done a thorough work. Nothing remained alive or of use. Even the dog had been dispatched. Jude gathered the cur in his arms, buried it beneath an apple sapling, and rolled logs meant for firewood atop the grave to keep out the wolves.

  “God rest their souls,” Jude said with a swipe of a grimy sleeve across his brow. “Best hie on back. That runner you sent to the fort should have them on full alert.”

  Weary beyond words, Clay took a step toward Bolt, the agreeable afternoon he’d spent at Swan Station besmeared by fire and blood.

  “You think we’d get used to such,” Jude told him.

  Was he thinking of Braddock’s defeat? The field strewn with the bodies of red-coated soldiers and frontiersmen, female camp followers and children? Even now, years later, heaps of bleached bones were still scattered about, lying as they’d fallen, too many to bury.

  One recent fact loomed large. “I received an unconfirmed report a fortnight ago that Chief Bull and five Shawnee families, all friendly to the whites, were cut down near Wheeling by settlers. This may well be retaliation, if true.”

  Jude gave a low whistle as they traded the smoky clearing for the night woods. Moving cautiously, saying no more, they both gave a sigh of relief when the lights of Fort Tygart came into view. A volley of shots welcomed them in, carrying a ring of defiance to any enemy who might be watching from the woods.

  In no mood to eat, Clay let Jude see to the horses while he crossed the common to the blockhouse. After being halted numerous times en route to answer questions and concerns, he finally pulled free. Hester stood at her cabin door, arms akimbo. For once she was silent.

  He went into the blockhouse and closed the door, stripping off his bloodied shirt that was stained beyond repair and throwing it into a corner. His leggings were no better, but his boots would scrub clean. If he could only launder his ravaged thoughts.

  Once he was dressed, a knock at his door led to more questions and then a hasty meeting on the common by the flagpole. This was followed by a breathless post rider who’d nearly been waylaid by what was thought to be the same war party.

  Anxious, harried settlers began streaming through the heavily guarded gates. Time and time again his hopes to see the Swans rose and then fell as people gathered in tight bunches on the common and doubled up in cabins.

  Clay climbed the rifle platform, the tension fairly crackling despite triple the guard. Even on so dark an eve, with nine fresh graves but a few miles away, the moon broke free of thunderclouds and a south wind awoke, as picturesque an evening as he’d ever seen within these wilderness walls.

  Time ticked toward midnight but still no Swans. Had they stayed on in the barred blockhouse and cabin? Even with seven guns, it could not hold forever. Jasper was as hardheaded a man as Clay had ever seen. Formidable as a militia captain yet blinded by stubbornness and pride. If anything should befall Tessa . . .

  Just when he could sweat no more, grow no more harried in waiting, a ruckus was raised at the gates. A stray shot had been heard in the woods a minute before, enough to raise every hackle. Then came the Swans at full gallop, riding hard across the stump-littered clearing, Tessa leading. Her hair was down, flying out behind her like the image of the woman fleeing in the wikhegan. One brother—Lemuel?—was on foot, bringing up the rear and running full tilt for safety. Had his horse been shot or stolen?

  Relief drenched Clay as he descended the ladder. The gates swung open to admit them, one rider slumped across a mount, reins dragging. The moon ducked behind a cloud, hiding the man’s identity.

  “They’re out there, sure as doomsday,” Zadock panted, swinging to the ground in the dust storm raised by skittish horses. “Cyrus is hit.”

  Tessa had dismounted, already at her brother’s side. Hair streaming down in a torrent of waves and tangles, her cap missing, she made such an arresting sight Clay felt his breath hitch. He came up beside her, catching Cyrus as he fell from the saddle.

  “Take him to Hester’s,” Tessa said, voice and hands trembling.

  Lemuel threw down his hat in disgust, so out of breath he spoke in winded snatches. “Those redskins got my prize roan!”

  “Better that than your scalp,” Zadock returned hotly.

  Clay hefted Cyrus across the common with his brothers’ help, Tessa keeping up with their lengthy strides. Hester had seen them coming, was busy gesticulating toward a bed in a cabin corner. Clay laid Cyrus down, the blood coming from his wound in short bursts. Not gut shot, praise God.

  They cut his crimson shirt off with a knife to lessen moving him. For a few breathless moments Clay stared, staggered. A tomahawk had sheared Cyrus’s right side, so deep he was in mortal danger. Clay had seen many injuries, and this one sent him back to Br
addock’s field.

  “Get Maddie,” he said to no one in particular. He did what he could in the meantime, staunching the damage with linen rags Hester brought, glad Cyrus hadn’t yet come to his senses. Such an injury would cause a powerful hurt. Whiskey would be needed in time.

  “For now, cayenne tea.” Hester moved briskly to the hearth, where a kettle steamed. “Pour some down him.”

  Beside Clay, sitting on the thin mattress by her brother’s side, Tessa finally spoke. “Keturah swore to flaxseed for poultices.”

  “Maddie is a hand at both.” Clay sought to cheer her as her hovering brothers fed him bits and pieces about the ambush.

  “Came as close to an Indian as I ever was before . . . Cyrus was in front . . . One buck tried to grab my reins, but I brained him with the butt of my rifle . . . Tessa broke free . . . Fell off my horse when it got spooked and bolted . . .”

  It came to him that Rosemary Swan was missing. They had a ready explanation for that too.

  “She wanted to warn Westfall. Said she couldn’t live with herself if he didn’t come in.” Zadock shook his head. “I was going to warn him instead, but she wanted to go herself. Saw her to his fence line and then came here.”

  “I’ll go see if they’ve come in.” Jasper turned on his heel and left the cabin.

  ’Twould be an all-night vigil with Cyrus. Tessa’s pained expression said she’d not leave his side, her pallor nearly the same as her ailing brother’s.

  Maddie finally came, managing her shock well enough when the dim lantern light shone on the gaping wound.

  “Colonel Tygart.” In the doorway behind them stood a member of the militia. “A roan horse with no rider just came up to the gates, and we let it in.”

  “That would be Lemuel’s,” Clay returned, taking a step away from the bed and looking at Tessa’s brother for confirmation. Lemuel nodded.

  “Better take a look at it, sir,” the man persisted.

  Injured, mayhap? In need of putting down? The Swans were known for their fine horses.

  Clay passed out of the cabin with Lemuel following, the rumble of thunder at their backs. They threaded through unsettled people and roaming animals, stopping just shy of the corral where a great many nervy horses were penned. The roan reared at their approach, its bridle held by none other than Jude, the set of his mouth bespeaking trouble.