The dream was as powerful as the wondrously strange scent of her.
“Mother, this is . . .”
Part II
The March Upcountry
Chapter 5
Daybreak, 5 October
Come first light, fair young damsels and their mothers were quickly the farthest things from my mind. Paw was suddenly back with us, and he was mighty skillful at capturing the attention of those about him, including certain sons.
It was Bear, God love him, who gave me fair warning. He got a grip on the muscles of my lower leg and squeezed till he wrung a grunt from me. Erin Green and my mother faded abruptly, and I came awake under the oaks where our blankets lay tight about a fire whose ashes still glowed with burning embers. I vaguely remembered Bear telling Tap to add wood to our fire when he rose to pee in the middle of the night.
It was a crisp dawn with traces of white frost speckling the grasses in the small clearing by the creek that held Blue, the horse string, and the mounts of Tap and Bear. Though full daylight was considerable minutes away, drums rolled and the commands of officers echoed to our front as they rousted sleeping soldiers. Behind us, drovers snapped their whips bunching cattle on the military roads constructed just yesterday. Whistles and yips from farther up the creek to our left signaled that the horse master and his charges were about the same task. Every direction I could see at all through the woods, smoke mingled with foggy mist. An army on the rise was a right noisy affair, I decided. No chore for the Injuns to locate by smell and sound, that was for certain.
“Your paw just rode from the trees,” Bear confirmed. “He’s dismounting next to your roan, and he’s not alone.”
My father was no less imposing than on other occasions. He stood a full six feet in height, and his wide shoulders ran parallel to the ground without any slope, making him appear even larger yet. His hair was black like mine and his eyes a deep brown and more piercing, according to Bear, than my own. Since he had forsworn the deerskin garments and moccasins adorning Tap and Bear, he was dressed as usual in ruffled shirt, broadcloth coat, whipcord breeches, and tall black riding boots. His flat-crowned hat was stiff of brim and fawn colored. A flintlock pistol rested in his satin waist sash, and he toted a long rifle with bright brass furniture, a weapon he had given the nickname Kill Dead. The shot pouch and powder horn hanging from straps looped over his left shoulder seemed out of place with Paw’s town clothes but indicated how seldom he was caught without the rifle and its necessary accoutrements. My mother, again according to Bear, could pray till kingdom come, but Caleb Downer would never shed the odor of wood smoke and molding leaves, for once a woodser, always a woodser.
The shorter stranger with Paw also made a lasting impression at first encounter. He wore canvas trousers, jackboots, linen shirt without collar, a blanket coat, and tricorn hat. His long weapon was a smoothbore musket, its metal fittings dull and unremarkable. What stood out at a distance was the outlandish size of his upper skull, hands, and feet. Atop his expansive forehead, the tricorn appeared merely a small cap. His booted feet approximated the bulk of flatboats. And the knuckles of his huge hands could be likened to rows of walnuts. For all the coarseness of his end parts, the stranger’s face possessed several highly redeeming features. I’d heard my sisters exclaim countless times over Roman jaws, Grecian noses, and dimples, and didn’t doubt many in skirts would yearn to meet the swaggering newcomer.
Without ever having been introduced to him, I sensed Paw’s companion could, if he were so inclined, prove a formidable and dangerous enemy with either mind or fists. And so did Bear. “We won’t dare be careless with that one,” he said with Paw and the stranger still out of earshot. “Less’n I’m wrong, that’ll be Court Starnes, Duer’s partner from Fort Pitt.”
I enjoyed Bear’s friendship because I could ask him questions about anything, a situation I desired with Paw. “You know of him?”
“Just from rumors at Fort Pitt. It’s said he killed a fellow his own size with his bare hands and his teeth in a brawl.”
Much as Court Starnes fascinated me, it was Paw I didn’t dare ignore as he drew abreast of the fire Tap had rekindled into a leaping flame. Dark circles undershot his eyes, and weariness slowed his legs, and Paw was never easy to treat with when a bleak mood gripped him. He introduced Court Starnes to everyone, then his gaze homed in on me. “I hear you’re the hero of the camp followers for sparing a girl named Erin. I allow that’s the first respectful utterance of the Downer name in some days, but more importantly, am I to understand Hardy Booth is dead, lost in your heroic rescue?”
I was too growed to stammer and stutter addressing Paw. I had learned to lower my voice and talk slowly so as not to reveal how I was spinning inside like a top just loosed from its string. Neither did I ever try to sweeten bad news. “Yes, sir. The Injuns overrun us and he fell with the first shot.”
“That where you lost your knife, too?”
My fingers strayed to the empty scabbard hanging from my belt. Tap always claimed Caleb Downer missed nothing wherever he deigned to look. “Yes, sir. I left it in an Injun’s belly.”
Paw accepted that bold declaration as if it were of no more import than my saying each of my feet had five toes. He glanced briefly at Blue and the other horses in the clearing behind us. “We lose anything else to the redsticks?”
A horse being somewhat larger than a knife, I was expecting such a query from him. “Yes, sir. Hardy and I bought the ten horses liken you wanted. As you can count, the Injuns made off with half of them.”
The successful purchase counted for naught, but I had to spout something in my favor. Paw naturally discounted it. “Son, I’m out a man, gold coin, and valuable horseflesh. Though I don’t like it,” he said, seeming to stare into my very soul, “I’ll swallow it. Long as it never happens again.”
Relief shot through me like a bolt of lightning. Maybe he wasn’t going to ask in front of the others if I thought, in hindsight, I should have followed his orders to the hilt and stayed with Hardy and the lost horses regardless of what else confronted me. Maybe he wasn’t on the verge of sending me quick-footin’ for home with my chin hanging low as that of a hound on the scent. Lord, Lord, if I escaped his wrath this time, I vowed there would be no next time.
Paw lifted his fawn hat and smoothed his black hair. “Well, by damned, St. Clair’s officers can fight amongst themselves as to who gets what horse, can’t they now?”
Paw’s following grin and short laugh were glorious to behold, for my recent shortcomings were now considered old news; not forgotten, but shoved to the back of his mind to be trotted forth later if he needed them. Paw remembered past failures in all their insufferable detail as easily as I recalled Blue’s name, which made being around him a constant challenge. You had to measure up every hour of every day. I had a notion I was being allowed to remain with his horse crew at the moment solely because he needed another rider, not because he condoned in the least the decisions I had made on the bank of the Miami the previous night. With Paw, blood could get so thin you couldn’t tell what was red from clear water.
“Tea be ready an’ we wouldn’t want her to get cold,” Tap announced with a congratulatory wink only I could see with his head slanted toward me like it was.
The scout passed tin cups around and poured a portion of the steaming green liquid into each from an iron noggin. On a cold morning, the warmth was as welcome as the taste, and it was hard not to court a burnt lip drinking too soon.
Court Starnes’s question, calmly asked, interrupted our meal of cold johnnycake and jerked venison. “Could you tell in the dark it was a woman the Injuns held captive?”
A smile that at first seemed warm and friendly eased his handsome features. But I couldn’t fathom much if any warmth in his pale blue eyes. I remembered a Harrodsburg horse trader whose cold eyes had betrayed a similarly charming smile and how he had appraised Paw through the guise of harmless inquiries so he could cheat him. As Tap opined now and again, “Even a sna
ke can smile if’n you give him good enough reason.”
“No, sir, I couldn’t. She was dressed in manly clothes.”
“None of her choice parts could be seen then?” Starnes persisted.
Wary as to why he was pestering me with foolish queries of no significance, I nevertheless answered, “She wore a floppy-brimmed hat that drooped to her brow, a leather gag covered her mouth, and her arms were tied together in front of her. She looked like a brown lump in the moonlight. Hadn’t been for the gag and her bound hands, I would’ve taken her for an Injun in a white man’s hat and let her ride on by.”
Starnes’s smile broadened. “Glad to hear that, Ethan Downer. Ain’t no female, Injun captive or not, worth a white man’s life. Nor good horseflesh, neither.”
I could hear the dawn breeze above the hissing of the fire. That’s how still it was of a sudden. I watched Paw in earnest. While he might have disliked my doing as I had given the results, the fact I rescued a woman had played no part in his judgment of me, for Paw never laid the sour mouth on a woman regardless of her circumstances. Oh, he might jest with them as Tap had with Annie Bower, but he and those about him shared the belief all women were rightfully owed the breath they drew. And horses were what their name implied—beasts of burden whose importance and value never exceeded that of humans, either male or female.
Though lasting less than a dozen beats of the heart, the brief span of silence said more than countless words of rebuttal. Court Starnes with a single arrogant remark had separated himself from Paw, Bear, and Tap Jacobs. They would follow his orders since he was the absent Duer’s partner, but never would they befriend Starnes or trust him completely. I would bet on that anytime, anywhere and win handily, the odds be damned.
It was Bear who shattered the quiet. “And what are we about this bloody morning, Caleb?” he asked of Paw.
Paw’s answer was blunt and without rancor. “We’ll look to Court for our orders from here out. That’s as the boss, Mr. Duer, wants.”
Court Starnes’s huge hands dwarfed his tin cup. He sipped green tea before speaking. “Given General St. Clair’s concern that we don’t have animals strayin’ off during the daily march or at night, young Ethan, Bear, an’ Tap will join up with Dodd, Duer’s horse master. Caleb an’ me will report to General Butler, who’s in command till St. Clair returns from Fort Washington. We can deliver the horses Ethan brung when we find Butler. After that, it’s the Ohio again for Caleb an’ me. We don’t poke the boatmen and the packhorsemen with a sharp stick every chance we get, this army will be starving within a fortnight.”
“We ate fine last evening,” Tap commented with a remembering sigh of pleasure and a rub of his protruding belly.
“Yes, vittles are plentiful just now. But with twenty-three hundred rations boltin’ down throats every day, the flour sacks empty mighty fast,” Starnes observed. “An’ fresh beef is poor fare by its lonesome.”
“That it be,” Paw agreed, drinking his cup dry. “Bear, you take charge of Ethan and Tap. The three of you are to stay with Dodd till you next see my face, understood?”
I thought Starnes’s cheek twitched a hair at Paw’s precise instructions, like he felt Paw was edging in on his authority. But maybe it was just that his skin itched, for he said nothing contrariwise. He simply tipped his hat to those of us not accompanying him, tossed his tin cup to Tap, and made for the horses.
When Starnes was beyond our hearing, Paw nailed me with those piercing eyes of his. “You mind Bear, and keep that rifle loaded an’ ready wherever you find yourself. I ain’t planning on making excuses to your maw was I to reach home without you.” That said, he followed in Starnes’s footsteps to the meadow.
I watched the two of them ride into the trees, General St. Clair’s horses and Hardy’s mare in tow. Paw was a fellow accustomed to shouting the gees and the haws and having others obey his lead. It figured then that some time in the not-too-distant future, he and Court Starnes would come up against it and clash openly, and deep down I feared for Paw, which shocked me.
Paw’s renowned skill with his wits and his weapons, coupled with his physical strength, had always been a source of great comfort to those who dwelled beneath his roof. Every member of the Downer family fervently believed he would always be there to protect us whenever the need arose. But lest my imagination was running free of its halter, and I didn’t think it was, Court Starnes was capable of matching Paw at his very best.
And the thought of that was mighty unsettling and worrisome, for I couldn’t remember when I had doubted Paw before, ever.
Chapter 6
Morning till Full Darkness, 5 October
We broke camp, Tap and Bear packing gear and dousing the fire and me saddling the horses. Blue, his belly full from his grazing the previous night before frost speckled the meadow, was in fine fettle and tried his best to accomplish his usual morning stunt of stepping on my foot if my mind wandered while tightening the cinch under his belly. Blue was no different than any other four-legged creature, be it horse or hound. Let him start something without correcting him immediately, and it became a habit you endured long as you owned him. Though he didn’t exactly own them and they were graced with only two feet, Paw always claimed the same was true of sons.
I endured another daily ritual as we rode west along the creek bank fronting our camp. It was Tap’s want to carp and complain once Paw was out of sight, and he didn’t disappoint Bear and me. Scratching at his whiskers every whipstitch, he went on and on. “Besides my one knee throbbin’ like a damn Injun war drum, my backbone’s bent crooked from sleepin’ on hard ground night after night. I could bear all that, if’n it wasn’t for the blunt truth I ain’t shat for a month of Tuesdays, neither.”
Bear, who prized a closed mouth less’n you had something worthwhile to say, sought as usual to silence Tap’s meaningless tirade, and as luck would have it, chance favored him this morning. He jabbed at the far creek bank with the barrel of his rifle. “Too bad for Ethan and me you ain’t like that bounder yonder.”
Tap and I couldn’t miss what he pointed out to us, for a large pair of white blobs jutted from the brown trunks bordering the current, and twixt the opposing buttocks, a gush of activity was occurring. “You don’t stifle yourself, I’m gonna hand you over to that gent. An’ by the size of those moons, he’s big enough and mean enough to make you grunt till you’re as empty as he’ll soon be.”
Tap knew from Bear’s stern tone it was time to cease his morning lament, so he now tried humor to ingratiate himself again with his best friend. “It’s our sad luck he won’t be with us the next dark night. His arse skin’s brighter’n any lanthorn I’ve ever toted to the necessary.”
Though Tap and I rode behind him and couldn’t hear his chuckle, the shake of Bear’s shoulders gave him away, for it was nigh onto impossible to stay peeved with the bowlegged scout. Still, Bear had gained his beloved quiet, and I was left thinking how glad I was that Erin Green wasn’t with us. The scene we had just witnessed did little to disprove Mother’s conviction that no female of proper breeding ever willingly sacrificed her privacy to travel with an army of men.
Crisply rendered orders and the whinnies of horses sprang from the trees ahead. We halted at the fringe of the westernmost military road and waited for a wheeled cannon pulled by matching grays to lumber past. Behind it came a company of Virginia levies. Those marching in the double file cast bold, hostile glances our way. “They act like we’re the enemy, not the redsticks,” I said in a low voice.
“Don’t they though,” Bear agreed. “You don’t know, you best. We ain’t wearin’ uniforms, an’ the levies along with the regulars detest all militia. They been told, and believe, rightly or wrongly, that it was Kentucky militia broke and run on General Harmar a year ago, causing his defeat.”
“They better not stick their noses too high. They’re raisin’ plenty of their own stink, have been since they marched from Fort Washington weeks ago,” Tap offered.
New as I w
as to events north of the Ohio, I asked, “How’s that?”
“They’re whinin’ like cur dogs they signed up for six months and not a half day more. They’re arguin’ the clock started ticking when they marked the paper, not when they arrived at Fort Pitt,” Tap explained. “If ’n they win out, there won’t be a levy north of Fort Hamilton come the first week of November, an’ that ain’t long from now.”
“General St. Clair won’t stand for their leaving, will he?”
“The general’s in a bind, Ethan. He can’t convince them to stay, they might start deserting on him an’ unravel his whole command,” Bear predicted.
“The regulars don’t side with the levies, do they?”
“Naw, but they’re madder’n hell they haven’t been paid forever, an’ they don’t think any more of the levies than the six-month louts do the militia. How’s that fire your wick?”
“Not the least,” I judged. “I’m just plumb thankful I’m not wearing General St. Clair’s boots.”
A sorrel gelding approached from the north on the western edge of the road. Atop him sat Captain Miles Starkweather. Upon sighting us, he halted his mount and crossed the road as the final file of levies tromped beyond our position. “I can’t say he don’t know horseflesh. That sorrel was the best horse I brought from Kentucky,” I conceded to Bear and Tap.
The blue and white silk cockade decorating the captain’s helmet was a brilliant splash of color in the gray light. And damned if the sun didn’t pop forth as he drew rein. In addition to the sword at his hip, he carried a rifle curled in the crook of his left arm. I didn’t feel good about it, for it made me feel I was turning my back on my companions, but I envied Miles Starkweather the cockade, the spanking uniform, and the long blade. He was a picture of the perfectly dressed dragoon officer pursuing his duty, and much as I resented it, he would always grab the attention of the prettiest of the girls ahead of me.
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