by Laura Frantz
But the one who’d pinned her to the ground . . . gone.
31
Jude gave a chuckle as they reached another nameless riverbank in the twilight. “So, you served the savages mush?”
“I thought it would go harder on us if I didn’t act hospitable,” Tessa confessed, cast back to that terrifying moment when she’d first heard tomahawks cleave the cabin logs.
“No doubt your scalp would be hanging from a belt if you’d done otherwise,” Westfall said. “After what we saw of Jasper . . .”
Clay shot him a look that bespoke much. A grievous silence ensued, the rush of the river not at all soothing. So, Jasper had indeed fallen, been buried by now near Pa, surely, facing east in readiness for resurrection morn like most settlement graves. How Ma was holding up beneath the loss of a husband and son—not one but two, counting Ross—was lost to Tessa too.
She fixed her gaze on Clay as she rode behind him and crossed the river, the cold water wetting what was left of her skirt and numbing the scratches on her skin. They were all a sorry, dirty lot, in need of a hot meal and a bath and a long night’s sleep.
She groped for gratefulness. She had but a few scrapes and sore fingers. Clay had survived that deadly tussle. Though her heart was torn to pieces about Jasper, she was more torn up about Ross, out there somewhere and unaccounted for. Now her fervent prayer was that the other party would return with him, intersect with them as they made their way back to the Buckhannon. But as night closed in, the men growing silent and forming a protective ring around her, she fell asleep to tormented dreams.
She was unaware she cried out till Clay loomed over her, the glint of his rifle in the pale moonlight a fearsome sight. He dropped to his knees at her shaking, the thin blanket around her no mask for her trembling. Letting go of his rifle, he reached out and drew her near, unmindful of the sleeping, snoring men surrounding them or the alert ones on watch.
“Tessa . . .”
She burrowed into him at the tender utterance, seeking strength. Solace. They’d not spoken privately since he’d found her. “How’s your head?”
“Still attached.” His wry words ended with a chuckle. “I’m more worried about my hat lost back in that draw.”
“Blast that hat. You saved my life, Clay. And I’ve no doubt you would have bested that Indian in the end. As it was, you took on all of them single-handedly.”
“I was most concerned about the tall one.”
“The buck who nearly scalped me by stepping on my hair as I lay there, then took your bullet and disappeared?”
He nodded, his sudden silence raising new qualms.
She rested her head against his shoulder. “Did you know him?”
Again that prolonged pause. It boded ill. She knew before he answered.
“Aye,” he said.
She waited, overcome by some unspoken regret, some grief weighting him that surely had to do with the wolf-marked warrior.
He drew her nearer. Lowering his head, he kissed her brow. “I never thought to see your hair unbound till we wed.”
She pushed back a wayward strand with her good hand, a twig tangled in its length. Pulling it free, she looked up at the moon. It resembled a scythe, bringing to mind Jasper at work in the fields, drinking the switchel she’d made him. And then her mind circled round to Ross when Clay said, “Tell me what happened at the cabin when the Indians came.”
She retold the terror of the day, focusing on Ross. “Later, on the trail, he fixed an Indian’s gun. I couldn’t believe my eyes but daren’t speak, lest it bring down their wrath on the both of us—”
“He’s no fool. Once they know he can mend their guns they’ll likely keep him alive. And he’s young yet. If he stays with the tribe, he’ll fare better than most. Mayhap grow fond of their ways—”
“Fond?” She couldn’t bear the thought. This chancy separation, this waiting and not knowing, was inconsolable. “You’ve got to bring him back, Clay. I thought—”
“You thought we were on the trail to find him? Nay, Tessa.” The firmness in his voice was like the closing of a door. “The other party we broke with at the river is charged with returning him if they can. My aim was to find you and bring you back.”
“But not without Ross.” Her fingers curled round his hard forearm. “I won’t rest without him.”
“Ross went north on the warrior’s trail. Once that happens it becomes harder to track him. There are countless paths to countless tribes. He might end up with the Iroquois, a far greater foe than the Lenape. But no matter where he lands, he’ll be considered a prize with his gunsmithing. At least he won’t burn.”
“Burn?” She’d feared it when taken, yet it spelled a blessed end once done. “Betimes that’s the better way.”
“Not if you’ve seen it done, nay.” He shut her down with his quiet vehemence. “If he’s not found he’ll make his way among them, be adopted. Mayhap he’ll run in time. But not all captives want to return to the white world. Some choose to stay red.”
His words kindled fresh fear in her heart. To lose a father and then two brothers, one of them to a people who would deprive them of his beloved presence, made her soul sick. Then to face the possibility Ross would betray them by remaining with the very people who’d torn them apart? The memory of him bent over the Indian gun, striving to repair a weapon of the enemy to be used against them, stole the last scrap of her composure.
Tears fell onto her torn bodice as an anguish she’d never known crowded in black as the night, seeping through every worn and weary part of her. Of all her brothers, Ross had hold of her heart. Would the Indians rob his sunny spirit? Change him into a dark-hearted warrior?
“You’ve got to go after him.” Her voice turned pleading. “Those other men in the rescue party—they aren’t you, Clay. You can find Ross. I know you can. Every delay spells disaster. I feel it.”
He shifted, the arm holding her more iron-like. “I’ll not veer from returning you home. I can’t risk the fort any longer besides.”
Dander high, she pulled away from him and lay down again. Though she was exhausted, ire kept her awake.
When they roused well before sunrise, she didn’t look Clay’s way but mounted her mare, spine stiff. Let him be stubborn and hard-hearted then. She’d not forgive him if Ross was lost. She’d rather her brother join Jasper in the ground. This infernal waiting and wondering would drive her mad.
Clay had sensed a stubbornness in Tessa from the first but had never felt the brunt of it till now. He admired her, loved her, but she was unbending as Hester in matters best left to him. All he could do now was pray for Ross’s swift return and contact Fort Pitt and other stations to alert them to his capture and hoped-for ransom. But it was a chancy matter with the utmost complexities.
As they rode east into the sunrise, the rift between him and Tessa took root. He felt it as keenly as the wound to his skull, but here, amid so many men in such haste to return to the garrison, there was no time to address it. He stayed at the head of the column, Jude as rear guard, their party with so many horses making a clamor no matter how hard they tried to pass unnoticed. The undergrowth had turned brittle in the heat, sun-dried with shades of autumn, the slight rain a distant memory.
His ongoing prayer was that Fort Tygart, though undermanned and worn down by the slightest skirmish, stood stalwart. How could he explain to Tessa that the good of many trumped the loss of one, even a beloved brother? Few withstood the horror of a fort’s fall, the once-proud pickets a heap of smoking ashes, mangled and mutilated settlers strewn like seed across acres of red ground. The day of the Swan raid, he’d read a report of the Indians and their allies bringing cannon against the westernmost outposts. Nothing could withstand cannon. All must surrender or die.
They rode on, through canebrakes and salt licks, along buffalo traces and deer paths, up and down till their horses grew lathered and clumsy, before coming to the north fork of the Buckhannon. Morning fog curled like smoke along the riverbank, blurr
ing the lines of cornfields and fences as they neared Fort Tygart.
The fog was lifting in the face of the rising sun. His distant scrutiny of the garrison gave way to profound gratitude. God be thanked. No taint of charred timbers. No corpses. There the fort sat on the rocky bluff, bristling with guns, a lone shot and loud huzzah welcoming them in.
He gave a look over his shoulder, heartened to see a sort of pained relief on Tessa’s face as she rode behind him. He wanted her behind walls. He’d still not settled down at finding her gone, that frantic, gutted feeling not yet dissipated. And with this new chasm betwixt them, what next?
Through the fort gates they hustled. For once Clay was glad to see Hester rush forward and take Tessa to her cabin. Maddie and Jude accompanied him to his blockhouse quarters, where a good hour was spent hearing reports of spies and answering questions of their own mission, only partly successful with Ross and half the rescue party still missing.
As if expecting a crowd, Hester spread a great many dishes before them in her cabin at suppertime. The presence of Cyrus, Lemuel, and Zadock only reminded them of who was missing. Rosemary seemed more grateful than grief-stricken, having both a daughter and a new husband returned. They all sat at the burgeoning table at sunset, wrestling with Ross’s loss, Jasper’s death, and what to do with Tessa.
“You’ll stay here, of course, till you heal,” Hester announced with a pointed look at her great-niece and her bandaged hand as she heaped more fried corn on Clay’s plate. “Nothing short of the Lord’s second coming would send me back to the Buckhannon at such a time.”
Tessa sat mute, eating little. Rosemary tried to draw her out in conversation, but Tessa was having none of it. Westfall did most of the talking, asking pertinent questions about the rescue and what other Indian activity had been reported along the border. Clay answered as best he could, tiredness overtaking him and almost slurring his answers.
He hardly tasted Hester’s coffin pie, though he dutifully washed it down with coffee. At supper’s end, he said quietly, “Obliged for the fine meal.”
“Obliged to you, Colonel, for rescuing my daughter.” Rosemary looked to Tessa, whose bandaged hand was in her lap. “You’re in need of rest. A bath.” She shot Clay an understanding smile. “As are you, Colonel Tygart.”
His own rankness was not lost on him, a further deterrent to any romantic thoughts. Tomorrow, bathed and clearheaded, he’d make time alone with Tessa, if she’d talk with him. The set of her features said she might not. Mayhap by morning she’d come around.
He left to attend to fort business, a deep-seated restlessness taking hold.
The next morning he was back in Hester’s cabin again. How could he tell Tessa the latest news? He took the seat nearest her as she sat by the open window with her sewing.
“You likely saw the search party come in without Ross a half hour ago,” he began. They’d raised such a commotion no one could miss it.
She simply nodded, tears in her eyes.
“I can’t tell you how it grieves me to say that.” He knew, too, she blamed him in some way. She never said it outright, but he sensed it. What else would explain her sudden and prolonged coldness?
“I wish you’d gone after Ross instead of me,” she said softly. “I know you could have saved him.”
Was it not enough that he’d saved her? Aye, a captive brother was a grievous matter, but if she only knew what it had taken to reclaim her, not to mention Keturah’s possible loss and his own complicated tie with Tamanen. Knowing he’d lash out angrily if he spoke, he left without another word.
At day’s end he sat down to pen a letter to Heckewelder to be read to Keturah in the event it ever reached them. He inked the quill, his hand poised over the paper, the dull ache in his head keeping words at bay. He wanted to turn back time to when Tessa was making him stockings and he was simply giving her a pretty book of verse. Not this. Not a debacle in the field and the woods, where good if misguided men had died on both sides and a brother had vanished. Two brothers. Had Tamanen not once been that to him?
To expunge some of the ill feeling, he pressed the ink to the page and scrawled, Brother Heckewelder . . .
Guilt ambushed his next thought. Gripping the quill, he forced the next line.
I trust you and your party are well and have met with success establishing your mission along the Muskingum.
He nearly rolled his eyes. Such foolish greetings when he was driven by one irrefutable fact.
I regret—
At that he almost slashed the word out. He did regret the killing he’d done that day. No peace was to be had violating “Thou shalt not kill.” But it was either Tessa or the Lenape, and the choice was never clearer. Bending his head, he grasped for gut-wrenching words to ask forgiveness.
Still, he could not say, I regret to tell you of the death of Tamanen, Keturah’s Lenape husband.
When he’d fired the shot to save Tessa, his one consoling thought was that it would be quick. A merciful end when it might have been unmercifully drawn out. But nay, he could not say in truth, He fell in an ambush near the west fork of the Little White River. Instead, he wrote only what he was sure of.
I regret to tell you of the capture of Ross Swan, last seen on the banks of the Little White River.
The quill shook. He set it down.
What had become of Tamanen?
32
A fortnight passed. August waned with a thwarted attack on a small station downriver. One man perished, and then the raiding Indians melted away. Clay kept a quarter of Fort Tygart’s men constantly reconnoitering. He resumed his scouting rounds, more at peace outside the garrison than in it. He and Tessa had barely spoken since he’d gone to Hester’s to tell them the sorrowful news that the search party had returned without Ross. Tessa’s hand was healing, and he saw her about the fort—drawing water at the spring, talking to Maddie, doing one-handed chores—but mostly she kept to herself and the cabin, turning her great-aunt uneasy and raising fresh concerns of his own.
She seemed a shadow of herself. Gone was the quicksilver smile that rose to light her lovely eyes. That lilting laugh. Her clothing began to hang on her slender frame. When he came in and out of the blockhouse he often saw her sitting by the cabin window less than a stone’s throw away. She looked at him without emotion, meeting his eyes only briefly. It cut him in ways he couldn’t fathom.
There was no help for a moment in time that couldn’t be undone. “There are other ways to try and recover him, understand,” he’d told her once. “I’ve written to Fort Pitt, sent word to various outposts. Trappers and traders often bring word of captives they’ve seen or heard about. The chase is far from done.”
She regarded him dully. The lackluster look she’d taken on since his recovering her hadn’t altered. A sense of hopelessness lodged like a millstone in his own soul. He vowed not to seek her out again. Let her come to him if she would. If. The crushing uncertainty of it hung over him like a hatchet.
Hester darkened his door, all but wringing her hands. “Can you do nothing?”
“About Ross?” he said, a hair away from exasperation.
“Nay. Tessa.” She shut the heavy door with surprising strength despite her small frame. “She’ll soon join Jasper if we don’t take action, pining away night and day like she is.”
“What do you advise?” The words came out harsher than he wanted, his own sense of helplessness skirting fury. Passing a hand over his jaw, he fumbled for answers.
“Her spirit’s troubled and there’s no help for it. ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.’”
The proverb was not one he liked to dwell on.
Hester came nearer his desk, all but pacing between it and the hearth. “Was it just my silly, gray-haired hopes, or did I sense some spark betwixt you two?”
“It’s since ebbed,” he said stoically.
“On her part or yours?”
“Not on mine.” There was no letting up with H
ester. Once begun, she’d not rest till she had a remedy. “But Tessa is in no temper for courting, as you yourself just said. And I have far more on my mind than frolicking.”
Hester snorted. “A little frolicking might do you both a world of good.”
The kisses they’d shared in the all-too-distant past cobwebbed in his memory.
“This fort is crawling with soldiers, given reinforcements from Fort Pitt just arrived.” She faced him, arms akimbo on her narrow hips. “Seems like you could take Tessa beyond those pickets anytime you please.”
He withheld a sigh. His self-made vow to not approach Tessa till she first approached him wavered before Hester’s persistence. While he didn’t believe Tessa would lie beside Jasper anytime soon, he was concerned enough that she kept him awake nights.
“I’ll speak with her, aye.” But not take her beyond fort walls, nor try to revive the spark that had once nearly turned him on end and now seemed like it never was.
Hester looked hard at him as if awaiting details. He gave none. With a harrumph she went away, leaving him to ponder this new predicament.
He was at the end of his tether regarding Tessa, soldiering on despite her, hoping something would turn in matters of Ross. Since the recent raiding and murders, he himself felt like a target, not knowing if Tamanen was dead or alive. If alive, he’d best watch his back. If dead, Tamanen’s fellow warriors would surely retaliate, might even now be watching the fort, awaiting his riding out alone.
Within these walls, his head and heart were engaged in full-blown battle. Even if Tessa stayed stone cold toward him, he must make a move. Either regain what was lost between them or make peace with the fact she’d never forgive him, their tie irretrievably severed.
His heart, so guarded, was now almost broken by circumstances beyond his control—a brother he couldn’t bring back, the woman he adored eroding before his eyes. He needed answers.
The night was starlit. Clear. A coolness had crept in, carrying a promise the first frost wasn’t far off. Clay came down from the rifle platform at the change of the watch, the brilliant sunset long since faded. The clarity he’d prayed for had finally come, but would Tessa agree to it?
