A Moonbow Night

by Laura Frantz

  The next day was the Sabbath. Raven and Sion disappeared on another scout while the rest of them stood watch and minded the camp. Low-hung slate clouds seemed to press the heat down till sweat ran out of their every pore. Tempe could feel the coming rain even before the growl of thunder.

  She heard the first spattering drops on the canopy of trees above before she felt them. Sion had left some papers out, a rock anchoring them, and she abandoned her mending to sweep them out of harm’s way lest the ink spot and run. She stepped beneath a rock overhang and paused before securing them with his field papers in a saddlebag. The studious title on one page stretched her simple vocabulary. A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America. Despite being a borderman in buckskin, Sion seemed as much a scholar as surveyor. He’d studied law, attended William & Mary. She’d never known anybody to do the like.

  Intrigued, she sat down, thumbing through the papers to the title at the top of his notes. The New Eden. She’d always wondered his thoughts about Kentucke, but he was like a closed book, his expression unreadable.

  3 June, 1777. Laurel rather growing worse. Mountains very bad, tops of the ridges so covered with Ivy and the sides so steep and stony, obliged to cut our way through with our Tomahawks. Creek so full of Laurel obliged to go up a Branch. Laurel thickest I have seen.

  She felt the sweat and toil of his journey, sensed the strain on his endurance. The notes, more journal entries, were stern. Severe. Was he blind to the beauty? What of the sunrise from the crest of Pine Mountain? The laurel’s flowering charms? The tangle of rivers in the valleys below?

  11 June, 1777. Came upon a queer inn near a boisterous falls. Blazed a way from the inn to the River. A large elm cut down and barked about twenty feet. Two hundred yards below this is a white hickory barked about sixteen feet.

  She was reminded anew of his mission. Claiming land and recording identifying marks. She read through the gathered pages at random till a ragged-edged paper caught her eye. Folded in half, it begged to be noticed. She opened it, stomach somersaulting as her eyes went wide. As though looking into a mirror, she stared back at herself. The likeness was not detailed but was true. Had Cornelius done such? Nay, the paper bore Sion’s initials in a crumpled corner.

  His writing hand was like all the rest of him. Strong. Memorable. Steadfast. A strange whim assailed her. She longed to stumble upon her name written in his heavy hand.

  Came across a doe-eyed girl, the prettiest I ever saw. Gave chase through the woods to a fine inn where I feasted to my heart’s content.

  But surely the drawing was enough. Yet what did it signify? That Sion was smitten? Bedeviled by her in some manner? She smiled at such fancy, earning a curious look from Nate. Off watch, he stood over her, surprising her. Last she knew he was seeing to the horses.

  Cheeks pinking, she thrust the papers in the saddlebag, tying it shut for safekeeping. “Mister Morgan’s papers were getting wet. I thought I might . . .”

  “Read ’em?” There was no censure in Nate’s query. He dropped to his haunches. Together they peered out of the rock haven. “You got a mighty big curiosity where Sion’s concerned.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  “Blame you? A pretty little gal like you? A big strappin’ man like him?” He gave a decisive shake of his head. “I ain’t so old I forget what it’s like to be love struck.”

  Love struck? Was he talking about Sion? Or the both of them? An uncomfortable heat suffused her. Matters of the heart were hard to hide. Betimes they defied words, shining out bright as a lantern.

  She took a breath. “Sion told me about Harper.” At Nate’s surprise, she said in low tones, “Only that she died. He didn’t say when . . . how.”

  “And not knowin’ is pesterin’ your conscience.”

  She nodded. “I daren’t ask him. This matter with Harper goes deep.”

  Nate removed his hat, scratching at his head with a grubby hand. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you about Harper . . . if you’ll tell me about your pa.”

  A cold hand squeezed her heart. What exactly did he mean by that? Yet she sensed Nate’s was a harmless curiosity. At the moment Harper Lyon Morgan was uppermost. Tempe stuffed any concerns about Pa to the back of her mind. “You don’t reckon Mister Morgan would mind you telling?”

  “Naw. I’ve rethunk the matter.” Nate spoke with a confidence borne of a bone-deep tie. “Where’d we leave off last time?”

  The thread was easily retrieved. She’d turned it over in her mind till it seemed woven into the very fabric of her being. “’Twas when Harper followed Sion to Williamsburg and they were wed. Then they went to Fort Henry, where he signed on as scout.”

  “Aye, Fort Henry.” Nate took a breath, the rise of the wind rustling the leaves all around them. “Farther downriver, just a bit east, Sion built a little cabin on land he’d claimed. Built it snug and sweet, just right for his bride. But then the Indians started raidin’ and settin’ fires to fields, drivin’ the settlers back into the fort. Harper hated bein’ behind pickets. Never could get used to the frontier bein’ so different than her home place.”

  “Oakwood?”

  He gave a nod. “She’d sent word for her father and Cornelius to journey up and see her, meet her at the cabin. She wanted to return home with them for a spell. Sion knew nothin’ about their comin’. He was away on a scout. So one summer’s day Harper slipped out of the fort without tellin’ anyone she was bent on the cabin. She was”—his voice deepened—“near her time.”

  With child? Tempe pondered this new wrinkle, watching the clouds scurry overhead. Nate needn’t tell her the rest. From his mournful tone she sensed Harper’s rashness was her and her child’s undoing.

  “Harper got to the cabin all right but left a plain trail. A war party, mostly Wyandot, were raidin’ the farms thereabouts. They set fire to Sion’s fine cabin—and tomahawked Harper on the threshold. It was this that old Mister Lyon and Cornelius come upon soon after. The old man was so overcome by the rigors of the journey and the sight of his daughter, he was dead by nightfall. Some said it was his heart . . .” Nate gave a painful grimace. “When Sion got back to Fort Henry, there sat Cornelius, fatherless and sisterless and blamin’ Sion more than the Indians.”

  Tempe sat stunned, sensing the anguish on all sides. Nate painted so vivid a picture she felt its shadow. Harper had been unfit for the wilderness. Did Sion blame himself for her death? Her discontent? Tempe had seen but a few highborn women come through the inn. Most had slaves to do the tedious work for them, but nothing could protect a woman from the rigors of the frontier.

  “There’s more to be told.” Nate reached inside his budget and extracted a plug of tobacco. Tempe waited, on tenterhooks till he stuffed it inside his cheek. “They buried Harper and the babe and her pa outside fort walls. Cornelius stayed on, too a-frighted to make the trip back to Oakwood. Since he wasn’t the firstborn, his older brother inherited most everything, cuttin’ him out.”

  So Cornelius’s bitterness wasn’t all Sion’s doing but likely stemmed from being secondborn too. “He and Sion are an unlikely pair, working together as they do.”

  Nate talked around his tobacco. “One has what the other lacks, at least till this journey’s done. Cornelius thinks he’ll earn a heap off that guidebook. Truth be told, Sion bides Cornelius out of guilt, mebbe, more than a need of his maps. Sion has plenty of coin comin’ from that stack of land warrants there.” He thumped the saddlebag. “He plans to part with Cornelius soon as the work is done.”

  Would it ever be done? An expectant silence ensued. ’Twas her turn, her part of the bargain. She took a breath, unwilling to plunge into untried waters, unsure if she could trust Nate. Her tale was overdue for honesty’s sake . . . but Pa would tan her hide if he heard her tell it. Removing her hat, she began to fan her face. The rain had turned the ground steamy as a hot spring.

  “After the massacre in Powell Valley, nothing seemed to work in our favor.” Her voice was low,
so muted she wondered if the hard-of-hearing Nate would catch the gist of it. She paused, wrestling with the details. “We’d parted with everything we had to come into Kentucke with the Boones. Like a bunch of beggars we holed up at a fort along the Clinch.”

  Nate looked pensive. “Fort Blackmore?”

  “Aye.” Her voice thickened as emotion knotted her throat. “It was a mournful time. A lean time.” If memory had a palette like Cornelius’s prized watercolors, hers would be black. “We’d not been there long when my father decided to settle out on an abandoned claim along Stony Creek. A Crown surveyor happened by the fort about this time and took Pa to task about the land—”

  “Did that surveyor go by the name of Frederick Ice?”

  The bold question struck her as hard as Pa’s hand. She opened her mouth to say aye. In doing so, would she help knot the rope around her father’s neck?

  “Mister Stoner, one of the horses needs lookin’ after, as he’s lamed.”

  So absorbed was she in the emotion of the moment, she’d failed to see Hascal’s approach.

  Nate stood. Stretched. “Excuse me, Miss Tucker.”

  Breathless with relief, she watched them go, Nate favoring his snakebit leg, as if their prior conversation was of no more consequence than discussing the weather. His limp drove home the memory of Russell, all the rest. She missed her brother and ma, even Paige’s jabbering. She was undeniably sore about Pa. Her fingers moved to her lip, healed now and showing a slight scar. They all had scars, every one, seen and unseen.

  Heavyhearted, she sat beneath the rock ledge till the rain eased quick as it had come, alone with her mournful memories of James.

  And now Harper too.

  Aye, something new had bloomed between her and Sion, only Tempe couldn’t quite lay a finger to it. It was nothing spoken, for he seemed more taciturn than ever, igniting her impatience. ’Twas the unspoken that befuddled and lured her like a bee to a blossom. She was all too aware of him, all too conscious of that overwhelming pull betwixt them. Was it only a few days ago he’d kissed her breathless near the caves? It seemed far longer.

  He was bent on returning there, but this time there would be no stolen intimacies, not in the company they were keeping. Just as well. She was unsure of him. Unsure of his thoughts. His heart. His intentions.

  Unsure of herself.

  She followed along behind him, this time by land instead of river, amazed he could move so fast and so silently with a party of men behind him. Even Cornelius seemed unusually quiet. Soon they passed the hollow sycamore. She gazed at it, recalling every passionate second and the war party’s passing. She looked at Sion, wondering if he thought of it at all.

  No one could accuse Sion of being ill prepared. He stood at the cave’s gaping mouth with haversack and coiled rope, a dozen unlit cane torches at his feet. He glanced at her as he tied on the rope. He’d hardly said a word to her since their treed tryst. Nate, on the other hand, had tried to corner her at every turn to learn the story of her pa, but she’d purposed to avoid him.

  Sion finally spoke to her. “You coming?”

  Her disquiet soared. Her gaze fell to the ground. She had no desire to go into that inky pit even with a thousand cane torches. She had a shattering sense that if Sion and Raven went into the labyrinth, Raven would emerge alone. Raven stood near, his sullenness forcing a contrary answer past her tight throat.

  “Maybe,” she mumbled, full of misgivings. “Aye.”

  At that Sion tossed her a length of rope. She caught it grudgingly, wishing he’d change his mind and push on toward the Falls of Ohio instead. None of the others showed any inclination to even approach the cave’s chilly opening.

  “Little more than an abysmal sinkhole.” Cornelius strutted about, pronouncing it the black death. “I’d much rather stay above ground and see to my maps.”

  “We’ll be waitin’ for you right here,” Nate said as the first of the cane torches was lit. “If you need a hand give a holler.”

  Tempe stared into the entrance, remembering the echoing. Voices carried far, wending down endless dripping passageways. Even a single drop of water sounded like a deluge. When they started down slick rocky steps into the first tunnel, she looked back to see Nate, hat in hand, eyes closed, locked in silent prayer. But she felt little peace.

  Walking between Sion and Raven, she seemed the only buffer between them. Something troublesome was still brewing in Raven. She’d felt it for some time now but couldn’t lay a finger to it.

  As the passage narrowed, she felt like a ground squirrel in a burrow. Sion’s stride was shorter, careful yet confident. Raven felt more shadow, at the mercy of their movements. The torches cast rich orange light over dry, dusty thoroughfares, the rock floor beneath their feet rough and uneven. And cold. So cold.

  In another mile or so, dread gave way to awe as they entered a huge circular chamber with rock formations in the form of giant icicles. This had caught Pa’s fancy with its queer otherworldliness. Like something out of Gulliver’s Travels, he’d said.

  Another qualm beset her. Shouldn’t Raven be leading? She’d heard Sion ask him to go first, but she’d not witnessed Raven’s response. Some Indians had a mortal fear of the caves and stayed clear of them, thinking spirits roamed within. Never had she seen Raven so distant. It shook her to her shoes.

  They walked on, skirting a sheet of water cascading down a high wall and disappearing into a crevice. The cold spray turned the ground slippery, and she lost her footing. Raven’s hands shot out and steadied her, though Sion, a few paces ahead, was none the wiser.

  Beyond the remotest crags she could smell sulphur springs. Truly, the caves seemed little more than a series of sinkholes like Cornelius said, ready to swallow them at the slightest misstep. To his credit, Sion slowed, his gaze scouring the walls and ceiling and floor wherever they trod, making a study of the way they had come by turning round and scrutinizing the way back.

  Tempe tried to sweep her mind clean of calamity as they stooped beneath a low place, nearly belly-crawling through a tight tunnel only to emerge into another grand, glorious cavern encrusted with lacy crystals and rocklike flowers.

  Sion held his light high, running his free hand over a particularly odd mass of rock-flecked black. “Gypsum,” he said. Their torches called out the shining specks like stars, a glittering mass of them that skewed her sense of time and place.

  Enough, she wanted to say. But Sion clearly had cave fever. Mud in his blood.

  She tried to gauge how far they’d gone. Three miles, four? Though the cave was cool and the pace careful, she felt strangely worn out.

  “Wait here,” Sion told them.

  Ahead of them was a yawning hole of a pit with dark green, lifeless water at the bottom. Slightly dizzy, Tempe held on to a jutting crag, distrustful of her muddy moccasins. A few bats hung over the drop. Were these strange creatures as disturbed by her coming as she was by them?

  Her cane light had nearly burned out. With a start she spoke over her shoulder to Raven, in need of another. When he did not answer, she whirled, walled in by blackness.

  Raven . . . gone.

  With a little cry she held her wan light higher. Had he fallen? Was he hurt? Backing away from the pit she gained solid ground. There she sank to her knees, tracing the retreating imprint of his moccasins.

  She went cold then hot. Sick with confusion, she watched the last of her light sputter and fade. “Raven?”

  Her answer was a rumble. Faint at first and then a fury. Rock began raining down, no bigger than acorns but stinging and sharp. Dropping her burnt torch, she raised her arms over her head, but nothing could be done to thwart the slide of mud and stone that swept her toward the open pit.

  25

  A wilderness condition is . . . a condition of straits, wants, deep distresses, and most deadly dangers.

  —THOMAS BROOKS

  The hair on the back of his neck tingled, giving warning. Sion hadn’t gone far past the pit when he heard a cry. Temp
e? It held a desperation that betokened something dire. And then the rock rained down, snuffing the sound, the cave’s stagnant air stirred into such a tempest it nearly snuffed his torch.

  “Tempe!” His voice was more roar. It stretched endlessly once the rock slide stilled. He clambered over the muddy morass, the stench of decay turning his stomach. Sharp stones cut into the soles of his moccasins whilst mud oozed in all directions, threatening his balance.

  “Tempe!” he shouted again.

  Nary another sound was heard once his echo ended save the drip of water. Flinging his torch onto a ledge, he fought back that sick, irreversible sense that it was too late, that nothing could be done to help her.

  He finally reached the portion of the cave where he’d last seen her. The slide had made a wide swath, bringing down an abundance of smaller rocks but no boulders.

  Clad as she was, she blended in nearly seamlessly with the yellowish mass. It wasn’t till the light flared and flickered that her braided hair offered a contrast, the plait half severed by a particularly jagged rock.

  She lay on her side, mired from the waist down only inches from the pit. And Raven? Gone. Sion barely gave him a glancing thought as he took Tempe in. Her eyes opened then closed. She said nothing.

  Couldn’t she speak? On his knees now, he prayed as he dug.

  “Tempe . . .” She looked so fragile lying there. He felt choked with the need to know nothing was broken beyond fixing. “Tempe, look at me.”

  Her head rested atop her flattened hat. It seemed to take her great effort to focus. “Raven’s left . . . Get out whilst you can.”

  She turned her head toward the torch. Half burnt, it promised scant light, not nearly enough to see them to the cave’s entrance. If he carried her and the torch too . . . The impossibility weighted him. With every second he tarried he lost more ground.

  “Go, Sion.” Her muddy fingers latched on to his sleeve. “Leave me be.” With those few words all the life seemed to flow out of her.