Blood at Dawn

by Jim R. Woolard

  Waiting for neither a yea nor nay from me, she pulled free of my clutching fingers and knee-walked to the fire, where she inserted the knife blade directly into the flames. She held it thus for what seemed forever, then scurried to my side once more. It wasn’t really so, but the hot blade appeared to glow cherry red. Without comment, she grasped my hand and placed it on her thigh. I tensed, and the stench of burning skin assailed my nostrils. From behind eyes tightly shut I heard her say, “That’ll heal nicely you don’t scratch or poke at it.”

  I kept my eyes closed. Showing pain was acceptable. Showing tears wasn’t if I could avoid it. Gentle fingers pressed against my split and swollen lip. I pulled away and she laughed. “Not to worry. I’m through doctoring.”

  I opened my eyes and she had returned to her smoking rack. The scent of rosewater still sweetened the air. The warmth of her thigh lingered on my palm. Her nimble fingers bent and wove the branches together, and I wondered if she had found it as exciting to be near me as I had her. Reluctant to surrender her attention, I rolled upright at the waist and covered my bare chest. “Your mother teach you to doctor?”

  “No, I learned listening to Annie Bower.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You’d never tended to anyone before this?”

  Erin laughed. “No, but Annie’s very clever about it. She was bound out to a surgeon during the Redcoat War. Believe it or not, she carries a tin of maggots she lets eat their fill if wounds turn proud on her.”

  “Well, least I was spared that,” I acknowledged. “I guess I have the both of you to thank.”

  Erin placed her smoking rack over the fire and began slicing the remaining venison into long, thin strips on a bark slab with my knife. “I’ll remind you of that when we next see Annie. Men are seldom interested in what she’s smart about if it doesn’t involve satisfying their other desires.”

  “She does encourage boldness in a man,” I suggested, realizing immediately I had no call to insult Annie Bower. I spoke again as Erin grimaced. “But she’s got little choice in her present circumstances. No one likes sleeping on an empty belly.”

  Erin sighed and lined thin slices of venison in a neat row atop her smoking rack. “Sometimes men conspire against a woman, and it takes great courage and cunning if she’s to avoid having to sell herself. It’s why I so love my mother. She’s never let that happen to either of us.”

  I was treading private, perhaps dangerous ground, but I couldn’t keep from asking. “Is the selling worse than being captive of the Injuns or the deserters?”

  “It would be for me,” she claimed, chin jutting forth. “So you know, the Injuns never touched me that way, and the Kentuckians argued forever about which one was to have me.” She fed new branches to her fire. “You know, there are worse fates than shaming yourself to eat. And I don’t mean death.”

  That assertion puzzled me thoroughly, and I made no response whatsoever. Her blue eyes settled on me. “Aren’t you curious enough to ask what’s worse than shame and death?”

  I nodded. “But I’ve no right to pry into your affairs.”

  She smiled briefly. “And though I don’t know you hardly at all, I believe you,” she said, face sobering. “So I’ll tell you. Nothing is worse than when your own stepfather betrays you. That’s what unraveled life for Mama and me, when she caught Moses Bean with me pinned between him and the stable door, his big paw tearing at my buttons. She threatened him with the tines of the hay fork till we were outside, and then we ran, straight into the night.” Her head lowered and shook. “It was miserably cold, and Mama cried and cried, blaming herself for trusting Moses wouldn’t molest her girl child.”

  She had me bent forward and listening. She slowly turned the strips of deer meat. I couldn’t wait any longer. “Where did you head? Did you have victuals? Warm clothing? Kin that would help?”

  She sat and drew her knees beneath her chin. She was silent for a long period, long enough I began to think she wouldn’t share the rest of her ordeal with me. Slim fingers rubbed her forehead. “We had no food, no clothes but those covering us, and no friendly door waiting with the latchstring out. Mama supposed Moses wouldn’t waste his breath chasing us. She guessed he’d wait for us to come home with our tails dragging, begging his forgiveness and panting for a rightful whipping. But my mama wasn’t dressing that hog, not that night nor any other.”

  Erin stared at the fire. “Lord, but it was as frightful as when the Shawnee had me. Wolves were howling, the wind moaning, and there wasn’t a star in the sky to guide us. We followed the Forbes Road toward Fort Pitt, two days away.” Erin shuddered. “We might have given in to the fright if Mama hadn’t noticed the tiny red smudge far ahead along the road. The farther we walked, the bigger the smudge of light became. The Lord watched over us that night, for it was the campfire of the Devlin brothers, Torrance, and the younger, Brendan. They were hauling a load of salt and whiskey for the army, and God never created two men more respectful of women. They asked no questions and took no advantage. They fed us and gave us blankets, and come dawn, we rode their wagon seat the two days to Pittsburgh.”

  She paused, and I frantically fished for an inquiry that would keep her talking. “Was it winter when you arrived?”

  “Yes, it was a year ago come December. Brendan Devlin coughed horribly from the moment we met him. We slept in a damp, drafty warehouse along the Allegheny, and Brendan’s cough worsened with the weather. In less than a week, his lungs filled, and he died. Mama was with him every second till he was gone. Tor Devlin was by then hopelessly in love with Mama, but Mama refused to let him spend his monies feeding us. She served the crowd at a roadway inn for food. I helped scrub the floor, haul water, and wax candles, and the owner allowed me to sit at the table once a day with Mama and share from her plate. We slept on the floor before the hearth and managed till the weather warmed.”

  Tap stirred and rolled onto his opposite side, interrupting Erin’s story. She waited till the old scout was again snoring loud as a rooting hog, then continued. “In the spring, an acquaintance of Moses Bean stopped at the inn. He never admitted it to anyone, but he surely recognized Mama. That encounter seemed to sour what meager fortune we had enjoyed since meeting Torrance Devlin. The next day, the innkeeper’s wife accused Mama of lusting after her husband. It was an outright lie, but nonetheless, Jonas Grant dismissed us from his employ that same morning.”

  Erin fell silent, as if choosing her next words with great care, a habit I’d noticed during our sojourn up the Miami to Fort Hamilton. “Mama and I were now without table or bed a second time, and it was Tor Devlin who spared us, same as he had that cold night along the Forbes Road. He heard we’d been cast adrift, and having enlisted in the Second American Regiment with the rank of sergeant, he was entitled to extra rations. Mama agreed we would accept shelter from him till she could find work that put a roof over our heads. God love Tor Devlin, he gave us his tent and slept in the open,” Erin praised, suddenly drying her eyes with a sleeve. “We were with him three weeks while Mama inquired at every Pittsburgh tavern and business where the owner had a wife and children, thinking I would be the safest in such a situation. But no owner wanted the both of us ... or so they claimed. I really believe Mama’s beauty scared their women.” Or more likely, that of her daughter had, I thought to myself.

  “About then, Sergeant Devlin announced his company had been ordered to Fort Washington,” Erin revealed, “and Mama began hunting even harder for a place for us. I think she had come to love Tor Devlin, but no matter how much we both despised Moses Bean, she was his legal wife. We were near desperate when the innkeeper who cast us out did us a great favor. Tor had visited us at the inn in his uniform, and Jonas Grant remembered him. In the hope he might reach us through the sergeant, he sent a note warning us Moses Bean was lodged at his establishment, asking after his runaway wife and daughter.”

  Erin sipped water from Tap’s canteen. “Moses Bean would force us to return to his farm, and the law would do nothing to p
revent it. We had to leave Pittsburgh before he located us. Tor Devlin bought us passage on a flatboat whose captain had his own family aboard, and we floated down the Ohio behind the barge of the sergeant’s army company. Once we landed at Cincinnati, Mama quickly determined there was nothing decent for us to do in the city to earn our keep.” Her blue eyes stared at me now, not the fire. “That’s how we came to traipse after St. Clair’s troops. Mama began cooking for the sergeant’s men and the wagoners. They turned their rations over to her, and we would prepare their meals. That way, we had plenty to eat and a safe haven for sleeping.” Erin’s sigh was the heaviest yet. “As God is my witness, Mama doesn’t prefer harlots and loose women for friends, but they don’t lie or cheat or demand you be other than yourself. And they don’t ask for anything but the same in return.”

  She was daring me to find fault with her mother, and it required no pondering for me to shy clear of that. Others might contend you couldn’t tell the women apart sleeping beneath the Green cart, but I had learned firsthand that wasn’t true. Fear and threat of starvation linked folks together otherwise unlikely to speak to each other. And no mother worried about propriety and appearance to the detriment of her children. I had seen my own mother the maddest when she felt her offspring were being denied the protection and sustenance due them from their elders. A sow bear protecting her cubs with fang and claw was no less a fearsome sight.

  “Your mother has kept you from both harm and disgrace. What the loose-jawed and narrow-minded spout off about doesn’t bother me any,” I stated bluntly.

  “Thank you,” Erin said softly. “It gladdens me that fairness holds sway in a few hearts.” Her hands closed into a single fist that shook with determination. “We Greens won’t always be beholden to others.”

  My questioning frown firmed the angle of her jaw. Her blue eyes glittered in the firelight. “I’ll be properly married and become a woman of property,” she vowed. “We’ll own acres of rich land. Our cabin will rest on high ground so it can’t be flooded. The cabin will be so big inside we won’t have to make a table of the front door in the yard when serving company. Its walls will be so thick the hearth fire will lick the cold from the room on the worst night of winter. Hunger and fear will be strangers to me and mine. That’s what I’ll have, and nothing less for me and my children.”

  It was a fanciful dream for a penniless young woman whose current home was a cart pulled by a nag whose innards were best friends with his backbone. But the earnestness and passion with which she spoke indicated this was no spur-of-the-moment rendering of her innermost longings. Erin Green had convinced herself she would have her day in the sun where all things would shine as she desired. She fully expected to marry a man of great wealth who could provide for her on a grand scale, a mighty grand scale you asked me, grandest I could imagine.

  Those glittering blue eyes never left mine. She took my silence to mean I doubted her dream. “Think I’m addled in the brain, don’t you? Can’t believe I crave so much, can you?” she challenged.

  I flopped on my backside, cursing myself for stirring the wound on my chest. I couldn’t halt what flew from my mouth. “If that’s the way it has to be, you better be prepared to spend a long time huntin’ your future husband, ’cause damn few free men on either bank of the Ohio eat from silver plates. And that includes all of Pittsburgh, from what I hear.”

  Erin Green snorted angrily. “I’ll find him, never you fear. You may not believe me, but he’ll be looking for me, too.”

  “Well, I hope it’s daylight when you meet up with him. It’d be something awful was the two of you to pass each other in the dark of night.”

  It was a raw, spiteful thing, and I shouldn’t have said it. I was really upset with myself, not her. I had somehow been foolish enough to suppose that if I was around her a while, she would simply jump into my arms and we would be together forever. I had never considered that she might not possess similar yearnings.

  This should not have been a great surprise to me. In all honesty, I wasn’t a handsome and uniformed man like Miles Starkweather, and what earthly possessions I could call my own amounted to my weapons and the clothes on my body, less Paw’s frock. I had no title to land of my own, and despite Paw’s success, with five sisters sharing an equal claim, there was no inheritance of any size looming in my future. Even the roan gelding Blue, along with his bridle and saddle, belonged rightfully to Paw. Thus, being neither rich nor handsome, it seemed to me the chance of Ethan Downer winning the hand of the ravishingly beautiful Erin Green was about as likely as the mighty Ohio suddenly reversing its course overnight.

  My wry comment about missing her intended in the dark had the result I anticipated. It earned me a view of Erin Green’s red pigtail that lasted the morning. Eventually, I bored of the silence and drifted off to sleep thoroughly discouraged that my ultimate reward for helping save her from captors both red and white would be to see her wed another man. A nastier turn of events was beyond my grasp.

  Chapter 20

  Evening Hours, 20 October till Dawn, 21 October

  I awakened from a most unpleasant dream, that of Erin Green’s wedding to an officer resembling Captain Miles Starkweather, he of the handsome countenance, the spotless uniform, and moneyed family. I was disrupting the ceremony with the help of a balled and cocked rifle when someone began shaking my arm none too gently for real. I came from sleep kicking and flailing. “It’s not the Shawnee, lad. It’s me, Tap!”

  I quieted at the sound of the old scout’s voice. The fire was out, and cold wind whistled through the openings in the logs stretching overhead. “Pass him meat and water, lass,” Tap ordered. “We’ll let him eat, then take our leave. I’ve scouted about, and there’s no hostile company anywheres around.”

  I was stiff and damnably sore from my wrestling bout with the deserters and climbing into a sitting position was downright painful in places. Erin was a blurry shadow, and I smelled her more than I saw her. She laid a bark slab of smoked venison and a canteen in my lap and retreated. I ate in huge gulps as if starvation had a death grip on my throat.

  With his excellent night eyes, Tap spied my finishing swallow of water. “I checked your rifle before dark, an’ you’re ready to travel. We’ll get shy of this hole an’ allow the mistress a few minutes alone. After you, lad.”

  The wind was colder outside, the moon peeking over the horizon. Tap pulled his covering blanket tighter about his shoulders. “Gonna be colder’n a frozen Injun’s arse,” he lamented. “The ground will be white as snow come dawn.”

  I shrank deeper into my own coat. “Yeah, Miles Starkweather fears a killing frost more’n anything. With all the woods forage gone, the packhorses will be lucky they can stay upright with their saddles empty.” I hawked and spat. “Tap, you think General St. Clair can hold his army together long enough to whip the Shawnee and the Miami?”

  “I’m growin’ damn doubtful. If’n it ain’t missing equipment, short rations, or desertions, it seems the weather’s agin him. But he’s a stubborn son of a bitch. I’ll grant him that. If’n he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have launched his campaign late as he done. I just hope his ambition doesn’t ruin his judgment. He wants a victory over the redsticks much as you want the mistress for your ownself.”

  My jaw was opening to counter Tap’s assertion when Erin Green slithered from within our hideout. Peeved as I was with him, I ignored Tap’s smug grin of triumph and stood mute as she joined us. “What’s our plan of travel, Mr. Jacobs?”

  “We’ll move fast and steady, sticking to the best cover. Any movement in any direction, we hunker down till we figure who’s out and about. Bear in mind you’re as dead shot by your own as the red enemy. We keep a goodly pace, we should reach St. Clair’s fort short of daylight. Any questions?”

  I was on the verge of inquiring where the Starkweather knife might be when a last check of my weapons revealed it was in its scabbard on my waist belt. A certain female had to have returned it while I was asleep. It grated on
my nerves how she made it so damnably difficult to stay mad at her.

  We marched in our usual line, Tap in the van, me in the rear, our female charge between us. The wind swayed tree branches and swirled leaves underfoot. The moon hung high and bright in a black sky brilliant with stars. Tap wove left and right to avoid the heaviest timber, thickets of brush, and rocky, uneven terrain. His course, howsomever, never wavered from roughly north by northwest. Twice Tap detected movement over the wind and the scurry of leaves and we halted, crouched, and listened till he determined whatever moved beyond our range of vision had more than two legs and didn’t threaten us. He later calmly ignored the nearby scream of a panther that raised a small yelp of alarm from the mistress and lifted hair on the nape of my neck.

  We had our first blow early after the midnight hour. Tap conferred briefly with the mistress in whispers. She then relinquished the canteen, slipped past me, and walked back the way we’d come.

  Tap knelt down, dampened his thirst, and fisted his canteen my direction. “Nature called again. Wonder it didn’t happen sooner what all she’s been through.”

  I fell to a knee beside him and drank without comment. Tap watched me with an unsettling intentness. His query still caught me off guard. “Them moccasins fun to chew on, are they?”

  “What the hell you mean?” I demanded brusquely, lowering the canteen.

  Tap’s grin, easily seen in the moonlight, was mischievous as that of a taunting child. “Oh, slick as you put your feet in your mouth whenever you gab with the mistress, it must rightly pleasure you.”

  I hoped the embarrassment I felt didn’t show on my face. “It ain’t none of your affair what I say to her, you old fart,” I fumed.