Lori Benton

by Burning Sky

  Willa had vanished into the cabin again, but she was filling a bowl with heated water, gathering linen for bandaging, moving now with reassuring efficiency. He turned to find Joseph on the porch step, watching. “My saddlebags—I’ve things in them will help.” Or he did have, he amended silently, catching the boy’s unrepentant glare. “Will you bring them?”

  Joseph went to oblige.

  Willa returned with the water and stepped across the girl to kneel beside her. “The wound is filthy. No wonder it is broken open.”

  The child shrank from her, scooting toward Neil until she was nearly in his lap again. Her brother stared darkly at Willa’s face.

  “What is wrong with her eyes?”

  “There’s not a thing wrong with her eyes.” Neil shot Willa a quick smile, which she didn’t return. “What’s your name, lass?” he asked the girl, a hand to her tangled hair. She didn’t seem to mind his touch, but she darted a look at her brother, as if expecting him to answer for her.

  The saddlebags came down with a thump beside him.

  “She is called Pine Bird,” Joseph said. “The boy is Owl. That is what the woman who was their mother called them. Their father’s name was Kershaw. By him, they were called Margaret and …?” Joseph’s gaze drilled into the boy, who gave no name but Owl.

  Willa held a soaked wad of linen at the ready. “The wound is deep at the one end. Can you close it?”

  “I mean to,” Neil said. “Now then, Margaret, Willa’s going to clean your wound while I see what’s left of my supplies.”

  “I did not steal that horse.”

  Already deep in the bags, Neil glanced up to find Owl looking at him, narrow eyed.

  “I never accused you of it, lad. Ah … God be thanked.” He extracted the small case of medical supplies he’d brought along to doctor himself and the horse as need arose. The weight of the polished wooden case bolstered him.

  “Did ye by chance mislay anything ’twas in the bags?” he asked the boy, with the mildest hint of wryness.

  “It’s all there. Except the food. And my sister is wearing—”

  “Yah!”

  The girl’s cry of protest startled them. Neil reached for her but not quick enough to prevent her kicking out with her sound leg and catching Willa’s forearm, knocking the wad of bloodied linen from her hand. She grasped the girl by the ankle.

  “Aki! Satahonhsatat, tha’tesato:tat.”

  Both children stilled, gaping at her. Willa stared them back, her face fierce in its sternness.

  Neil put a hand to her shoulder. She was trembling. “Willa, if this is upsetting you, Joseph can help—”

  “Yes. He can.” Willa released the girl and went into the cabin.

  Neil stared after her until the child’s fingers touched the wrappings he still wore on his wrist and hand. Her eyes looked up at him, trusting.

  “I’ll need to stitch it shut, lass,” he said, unwinding the linen from his wrist so he could better use the fingers of that hand. “ ’Twill hurt, and I’m sorry for it. Can ye be a braw lassie and verra still, and let me do what I must?”

  His accent tended to thicken at such moments. He doubted she’d understood half of what he’d said, but when it came to it, she clenched her eyes and her brother’s hand and endured the suturing without a sound, though tears streaked the grime on her cheeks and tremors shook the flesh beneath his hand. Then he was knotting the last of the stitches, and the worst was over. For the lass. He was aware now of a sharp throb in his right wrist, which had borne the brunt of the work.

  “Right, then, wee Maggie. Go on and cry now—”

  The girl reached skinny arms for him; by instinct he gathered her in, one-handed, looking over her tousled hair at her brother, who was staring at him with eyes far older than the rest of his face.

  “She has not been called Maggie,” the boy said, “since the redcoats killed our father.”

  They settled the children in the cabin’s front room and fed them what remained of the midday meal. Neil sat at the table, resting his arm. He wanted to see to Seamus, but Willa had taken their dirtied bowls and the kettle to the spring to scrub, and he didn’t wish to leave the children alone. From the corner of the room where the quilt had been spread, they stared at Neil, the boy with open distrust.

  Hearing Willa’s voice in the yard, he went to the door. She stood near the horses, kettle clenched to her chest, confronting the Indian, who was lifting the mare’s saddle to the ground.

  “Do not ask it of me, Joseph. I have no heart in me for this.”

  The Indian straightened. “It is not only I who ask.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They are Wolf Clan,” the Indian said, sorrow in his look. “That should be reason enough.”

  Willa bowed her head over the kettle. Neil saw her throat work in a swallow. “ ‘A bruised reed …’ ”

  Joseph touched her cheek. “ ‘Shall he not break.’ ”

  Neil’s heart jumped at the scripture, his own soul quickening to its promise. And the smoking flax shall he not quench. Aye, he thought, uncertain still as to the cause of Willa’s pain, but wanting her to see past it—as apparently Joseph was hoping she would do.

  Willa leaned her cheek into his large brown hand, but her face remained pale, pinched, and more vulnerable than Neil had ever seen.

  “Until the leg is healed,” she said.

  “Awiyo.” A tender exultation chased the sadness from Joseph’s face. “It is good.”

  Willa’s voice was flat. “We will see.”

  Neil stepped back inside the cabin before they caught him listening. In a moment Willa brushed past him and went to hang the kettle at the hearth. Her face was composed now.

  “You will want to see to your horse,” she said to him. “Go, then. I will plant no more today.”

  Neil hesitated, glancing at the children on their pallet. The boy glared, mistrusting them equally. The girl watched Willa with half-fearful eyes. “Ye’ll be all right, then?” he asked.

  Willa did not turn to him. “Yes. Go.”

  He went, his last glimpse that of the girl’s clinging gaze.

  Joseph had removed the roan’s saddle and burdens and was busy going over the horse as Neil had done before, checking for injury. Ignoring a proprietary twinge, he crouched beside his field desk, unwrapped the oiled canvas, and opened the lid. His paints, the white clamshells he used for mixing them, the good paper stock, pencils, ink, quills—it was all as he’d left it. Oh, the joy.

  “Those children in there found this horse wandering alone.”

  Neil tipped his head back to see the tall Indian was through going over his horse. “So I gathered. It strayed when I took my fall, before Willa found me.”

  As he stood, Joseph grunted. “It is missing a shoe. The hoof is sound. I do not think the horse is bad lame.”

  “There’s a smith in Shiloh.” Neil began to see the shape the rest of his day was to take. It meant leaving Willa and the children alone, unless Joseph planned to linger for a while.

  He wondered at the depth of her distress over the children. Certainly their arrival was unexpected, and it was reasonable to assume two children to look after were the last thing she needed. That didn’t seem sufficient to explain her upset. Or that poignant scene in the yard he’d witnessed. Was it because they were Mohawks?

  “It is not even three moons since her children were taken.”

  Joseph’s startling, low-spoken words worked themselves into Neil’s brain but found no purchase there. “Her children? She’d bairns?”

  Surprise flickered in the Indian’s eyes, and wariness. “Two daughters. She has not told you of them?”

  Neil knew of a husband. Willa had as much as admitted to one the day Richard Waring rode into the yard. But not that she’d borne him children … daughters. Dead but months past?

  He started for the cabin.

  Joseph’s hand clamped around his arm, stopping him. “I should not have spoken. I thought she must h
ave told you.”

  Neil pulled free. “How old were they, her daughters?”

  At first Neil thought the Indian would say no more. But at length, he relented. “One was six winters, the other not yet two. That is all I will say. Let her say more if she chooses. I must build a better shelter for the animals, now that you have your horse back.”

  Joseph moved away. Neil caught him up as he reached the chopping block and wrenched free the felling ax. “I’d like to help.”

  Black eyes above chiseled cheekbones regarded Neil, their assessing scrutiny settling on his wrist. “There is no need.”

  The eyes had said something less kind. Or so Neil thought. That enigmatic face could be as stern and closed as Willa’s.

  Swallowing his smarting pride, he watched the Indian head for the trees beyond the cabin, armed with his rifle, ax balanced easily across one broad shoulder, determination—and a not-so-subtle disdain—communicated with every fluid stride.

  At least he meant to stick close by for the present. He would pray Joseph found the words to help Willa past her heartache, to show these children kindness. He’d have tried to speak such words himself, but the Indian was right. Unless Willa chose to share her grief, he hadn’t the right.

  Behind him Seamus nickered, reminding him of other needs, and his blessings. The weather was fine, the sun high and warm in the vaulted blue sky, and he’d just recovered all that he had lost.

  “Aye, then,” he said. “Let me fetch my satchel and we’ll be off to see MacNab.”

  After cleaning Seamus’s hoof, MacNab shaped a fitting shoe. While the smith did his work in the yard, filling the air with the acrid smell of burning hoof, Neil ducked inside the smithy. At the drinking bucket kept inside the wide-open doors, he dipped a gourd to quench the thirst worked up on the walk into the settlement. He still had the gourd to his lips when the smith’s hammer stilled and Neil heard him say, “Och, aye. A moment, then, and I’ll see t’ the Colonel’s mares.”

  Neil hadn’t heard any new arrivals over the hammering and had no time to react before a figure stepped within, headed for the bucket Neil was drinking from. With his eyes already accustomed to the dim interior, Neil caught the blaze of red hair as the new arrival doffed his hat and scratched behind an ear, recognizing Aram Crane, Colonel Waring’s groom. The man caught sight of him next instant. He drew up short, as if he meant to duck back out without so much as an acknowledgment, then seemed to change his mind.

  “MacGregor, isn’t it?” Crane tossed a glance at the yard and asked in some surprise, “That roan MacNab’s shoeing, is it yours?”

  “That he is.”

  “Where did you come by him?”

  Neil explained how he’d lost the horse but kept the particulars of its finding vague. He raised the gourd, still dripping in his grasp. “Water?”

  Crane hesitated, then came forward and took the dipper. He downed a swallow and hung the gourd on the bucket. “That’s a turn of luck, it showing up again.”

  “I’m inclined to think it the hand of Providence.”

  Crane’s mouth twisted. “Anyway, looks to be in fair condition. Guess you’ll be moving on now?”

  Moving on. The very thing Neil had pondered with every step into town, though with less enthusiasm than he’d have thought would be the case. The shame of returning to Philadelphia in defeat was no longer an issue, thanks be to the Almighty and Joseph Tames-His-Horse. But that first flush of joy had abated; with the return of his horse and supplies, other decisions loomed.

  Moving on. Soon, he thought. But not quite yet. Giving his wrist another week of rest wouldn’t come amiss. ’Twas throbbing with a vengeance after tending to the girl. Thought of saddling a horse each day, shifting gear to and fro, was enough to make him wince.

  And then there was Willa. Now she had the children to tend as well as her fields, while the issue of her parents’ loyalties still hung over her uncertain future. The likelihood of her carrying out the brave promise spoken to Elias Waring seemed slim, while she was tied by strings of necessity to hearth and field. Was there some way he could help her, before moving on?

  But what of his own duties, his own promises? He couldn’t deny the call of pen and brush and plant press, of solitude and wilderness, but he felt a twinge of guilt to think of leaving now.

  “Aye,” he said. “I suppose I must do. Soon enough.”

  It struck him as odd that Waring’s groom should look relieved at his words.

  “What is it exactly you’re doing out here, wandering about?”

  “I’m sent by the American Philosophical Society to catalog—to create a field guide of sorts—the mountain flora north of the Mohawk River. I’d lost most of my equipment for the work along with the horse. But that’s all restored now.”

  “The boy, Lem, he’s told me the tale of you falling from that boundary stone half a dozen times. I suppose by now you’re wishing it’d been just about anyone else come along to drag you home like a load of deer meat.” Crane finished with a significant look at Neil’s hairline, or where it would be if his hat wasn’t covering it.

  Neil had revealed his scar at their first meeting at the mill, in an effort to show Crane he wasn’t the only one to have suffered during that raid, and that such blanketing hatred he seemed to hold for the entire race of red men was unwarranted. Perhaps it had been a misguided action on his part. Was the man now attempting to sympathize with him by insinuating he, too, must hold Willa in low regard?

  “What happened to me at Cherry Valley had naught to do with Willa Obenchain. ’Twas years ago, and she wasna there.”

  “No,” Crane said. “But maybe some of her red brothers were. Anyway, she’s drawn you into her troubles, hasn’t she?”

  “No more than I’ve drawn her into mine.” Neil raised his right hand, wrapped again after seeing to the girl. “And whatever this interruption has cost me, what the British did at Cherry Valley cost a hundred times dearer.”

  Crane’s whole posture changed, like a dog bristling at a threat.

  “The British? The Eighth would’ve kept to the fort and left the settlement alone. It was Brant’s savages did the butchering. They wouldn’t be controlled.” The man’s face seethed. Spittle flecked his lips as he added, “There was nothing the regular soldiers could do once the brutes got a taste of blood and burning.”

  Taken aback by such vehemence, Neil stared at Crane several moments before the meaning of the words sank in. “How is it ye ken so much about the British regulars and what they could or couldna do? ’Twas all a swirl of smoke and flame and chaos, as far as I could tell.”

  The hard line of Crane’s lips parted, but only to gape in silence. The hammering in the smithy yard had fallen silent too. Neil looked toward Seamus, to find the sunlight of the yard blocked by the hulking figure that stepped into the smithy and took Aram Crane by the arm.

  “MacNab’s ready to tend our horses,” Richard Waring said, low voiced. “I need you in the yard.”

  Crane jerked, as if Waring’s grasp had broken a different sort of grip, and went out into the sunlight, leaving Waring facing Neil. Before stare or silence could resolve itself into anything concrete, the man nodded briefly and stepped into the yard, vanishing from sight beyond Seamus, where the Colonel’s horses waited.

  FIFTEEN

  The spade had gone missing. It was not on the porch, where Willa had left it last evening. It was not by the new horse shed or corral, or anywhere in the yard or field. With the morning wearing on, she pushed her way back inside the cabin, decidedly vexed. It didn’t help her mood to find Neil MacGregor seated at the table, the girl perched beside him peering round-eyed at his drawings spread across the boards—or that the boy still sulked in the corner as he’d done for the past two days. Even the collie was taking its ease, sprawled before the hearth where the fire had dwindled to embers.

  Gripping the door’s edge, she kept a precarious hold on her temper. “Which of you took away the spade, and where did you put it?”
>
  Neil looked up. “Was it not right outside the door yesterev’n?”

  “It is not there now.” Furtive movement in the corner drew her narrowed gaze. “Two will find it faster. Owl, if you wish to stay here while your sister’s leg heals, you will make yourself useful.”

  Without moving off the pallet, the boy muttered, “I don’t know where it is.”

  “You’ll speak to Willa with respect, Owl. Get up and do as she asked.” Neil MacGregor stared the boy down until Owl heaved himself to his feet and started toward her.

  Neil spoke again as she turned to go. “I’ll be along to help as well. I meant to try my hand at drawing again today, but that can wait till dark.”

  “You should not be drawing or working in the field. Your wrist was made worse when …” Willa glanced at the girl, who quickly lowered her eyes.

  “I think we’re back on course with the healing.” Neil turned to the child with an easy affection that made Willa’s chest constrict. “What say ye, lass? With my legs and your hands, can we put in the work of one able-bodied farmer?”

  At Pine Bird’s shy nod, Willa’s ribs squeezed tighter. She clenched the door. “No one will work if I cannot find—”

  A thunk reverberated through the door with the force of a slamming fist. The impact shuddered up Willa’s arm, choking off her words. The collie sprang up with a startled woof.

  Yanking Owl out of the way, Willa shoved the door closed, shutting them within.

  Neil shot to his feet. “What was that noise?”

  Heart thundering, Willa snatched up her musket. “Stay back,” she said to Owl. “Neil, move the girl to the hearth.”

  She waited until none of them could be seen from the doorway, then pulled the door open a crack. The metal hinges creaked, but there was no other sound. Soft air trickled in, smelling innocently of morning damp.

  Neil was frowning, the girl pressed to his side. “Willa, what—?”

  “This.” Clutching the musket, she swung the door wide to reveal the feathered shaft of an arrow embedded in the wood, at exactly the height of her throat.