by Lori Benton
Watching her cope with the shattering of her life was like seeing himself ten years back. From his present vantage he knew, despite her single-minded pursuit of her son, there was no guarantee it would end like she hoped, with or without his help.
He felt the boring of Zane’s gaze. “You going over to look for the boy?”
“Least to Yellow Creek. Just not sure what to do with the mother.”
Zane gestured at the men at work on the stockade. “We’ll keep ’em safe till ye come back this way—with her boy, God and Logan willing.” The younger man paused, studying him. “You and Logan go back as I recall, but Lord have mercy, Ring, this don’t seem the best time for a white man to be trading on that Mingo’s friendship. Even you.”
Jeremiah needed no reminding. “Bad timing or no, seems the Almighty picked me out for the task.” Speaking of time…Feeling it slipping past, inexorable as the river’s flow, he glanced through the open door of the blockhouse.
Zane read the gaze. “You need anything for the journey, or the woman while she’s waiting on you?”
Thinking of Mrs. Inglesby’s ruined shoes, provisions needed—he’d no intention of leaving her to feed herself—he said, “I do, but what goods I have I need to keep, in case it comes to trading for the boy.”
Zane clapped his shoulder. “Take what you need. Bring me some prime furs next time you come through and we’ll call it a trade.”
He’d have welcomed being proved wrong. In truth he’d have danced a jig had Clare Inglesby found her son in Wheeling.
“These ones here haven’t seen him, I take it?” Finding her at the creek, he’d nodded at the women still washing. “Neither has Zane.”
She’d stood there, a wrung clout dripping in her grasp, while Pippa, fed and content, slept in the cradleboard.
“Have you spoken to everyone in Wheeling?” she’d asked, knowing he’d done no such thing.
“To those who’d know if your boy was brought in by anyone other than…” He’d searched her face, trying to judge whether she’d grown more accepting of facts.
She’d raised her chin, and it was again as if he saw the younger man he’d been. Her life had shattered out of her control. She was exerting her will in whatever way she could, desperate to gather up her pieces, to reassemble what remained, far from accepting it could never be done. Not by her hands.
He hoped she figured it out quicker than he had.
“I mean to make a thorough search. If it vexes you, then you need take no further thought to me, Mr. Ring.”
“On the contrary, Missus,” he’d told her. “I’m giving you considerable thought.”
“Do you mean to prevent me doing what I need to do?”
“You’re free to do as you will, but—”
“Good. Then I bid you farewell, and thank you again for all you’ve done. I…” She’d hesitated while the women on the creek bank watched and listened. “Had I saved it I would give you Philip’s timepiece in payment for all your trouble.”
His face had flamed at the notion of her paying him for his help—and at the presence of that timepiece in his knapsack.
“I’ve asked no payment.”
“Very well then.” She’d made him an awkward curtsy and turned her back.
He hadn’t known what else to do but leave her to go her willful way, telling himself he could be patient, as others had been patient with him. More than patient.
He pitched camp as far from the point where he saw she’d begun her search as possible, then spent the day talking to those of his acquaintance in Wheeling to be sure no one had heard of Jacob Inglesby and neglected to tell Zane of it. He’d kept track of Mrs. Inglesby throughout the day, careful not to let her catch sight of him.
As dusk was closing in he found her again at the camp of one of the creek women who’d let her spread her washing to dry under the watchful eye of an older child. As he neared he spotted her at the edge of camp, baby on her back, washing in hand, seeming in no hurry to quit the other woman’s company, as if she hoped to be invited to spend the night. But the woman was overrun with little ones, two of them screaming and flushed as though ailing.
Jeremiah had come upon them soft-footed, in the shadow of a nearby oak, moccasins making little sound on the mulching leaves and acorns underfoot. He’d nearly reached the camp when he saw Mrs. Inglesby turn wearily to head away into the gathering night, hiding her fear and disappointment until she faced his way. She took two steps from the camp, not seeing him in her path, before the sole of her right shoe parted from its upper and she stumbled over the broken pieces.
He reached her in time to prevent a fall, grasping her by the arm. She reared her head back. “Mr. Ring?”
“You all right?”
Pulling away from him, she knelt to pick up the pieces of her shoe, voice trembling as she asked, “Is there some way to repair this? Perhaps I can tie it together?”
“Better to replace the pair of ’em.”
“How?” She sounded on the verge of tears. “I’ve no coin. Nothing to trade. And I’ve yet to look for paying work.”
“No need for either.” Jeremiah opened his knapsack and took out a pair of moccasins, much too small to fit his feet. “Trade those shoes for these, Missus, then let’s get you to a fire, a meal, and a place to sleep for the night.”
She reached to take the moccasins from his hands, hers trembling, and instead sagged toward him as though her legs wouldn’t hold her up another moment. He caught her with an arm around her waist, led her to a nearby stump, sat her down and removed her other shoe, nearly to the point of disintegration as well, and slipped the soft moccasins on her blistered feet, while she wept behind her hands and the baby whimpered on her back, wanting again to be fed. He fetched the washing she’d dropped, drew her to stand, and led her to his small fire and the shelter he’d raised—an oilskin tented over a sapling frame.
He settled her in front of it, put her washing inside the tent, took the cradleboard off her back, removed Pippa from it, and handed the baby into her arms. Turning his back, he set about fixing them something to eat, knowing she didn’t like him looking at her until she’d settled the baby and covered herself.
“You’re still here?” she asked at last.
Though the answer to that was obvious, he didn’t say so. Likely she thought he’d taken that canoe downriver and was on his way to bring the Shawnees the message she’d delayed him in delivering. But he wasn’t going to Cornstalk’s Town. Not yet.
He faced her.
“I never intended leaving you here without so much as your next meal.” It was a choice he thought any man of worth would have made in his place so was unprepared when Mrs. Inglesby burst into tears and hunched over her suckling baby, rocking herself with the streaming flood.
He’d been fixing corn dodgers. He moved them away from the heat and gave her his full attention.
“If only Philip had listened to me,” she was saying, half-choked by her tears, “or to Uncle Alphus. Have I lost Jacob now as well?”
Uncle Alphus. Jeremiah hadn’t heard her name that connection before.
“I’m sorry, Missus, but you got to believe me when I say you could spend a week asking these folk if they’ve seen your boy and it’s not going to help you.”
She looked at him with pleading eyes. “Have I wasted this entire day?”
“Not if it’s helped you see matters different.” He didn’t say a day more or less likely didn’t matter now. “There’s no going back to change what’s past,” he said, the truth of the words searing him deep. “But we can advance from this point and make the best choice we can with what we got to go on.”
“I must find Jacob. That’s all my world now. All my hope.”
If he’d ever before heard the essence of a human soul distilled in so few words, Jeremiah couldn’t recall it now.
“You aren’t going to, Missus. Not here in Wheeling.”
Pippa gave a hiccup, then settled back to feeding. Mrs. Ingles
by looked at him with green eyes darkened in the firelight to the shade of a high-country spruce.
“You’re sure?” she implored, though he could see she was finally ready to believe him.
“What I’m sure of is that Indians took your boy out of that wagon. Indians left the tracks we saw. And Indians wouldn’t have brought him here.”
Clare Inglesby had ceased her crying and was looking at him with an intensity that rattled him, yet compelled him to help. Knowing it would be the last time he did so, whatever her response, he said, “Our best chance of finding your boy is at Yellow Creek, and the less time passes before I head upriver, the better the chance of getting him back before someone decides to keep him. I’m leaving at first light. Ebenezer Zane will find you a place here while you wait.”
“Turn around please,” Mrs. Inglesby said, and after a second of staring, he realized she needed to readjust the baby.
Behind his back all was silent save the rustle of garments against skin and the baby’s smacking, until finally she said, “You truly are going upriver, not down to the Scioto? You may turn around now.”
He turned. “I’m going to find Logan.”
He saw the terror wash over her features at his words. But love and need rose up stronger, and he knew what was coming an instant before the words tumbled out of her mouth.
“Then I’m going with you. I’ll not be left behind to wait. There’s much I find I can bear, Mr. Ring. More than ever I knew. But I couldn’t bear that. If you’re going to the Mingos, then I’m coming with you.” She made her voice firm, as if expecting a battle from him. “I’m sure you mean to tell me it will be dangerous, but I will face any danger—even death—for Jacob’s sake.”
There went that chin lifting and it nigh broke his heart, knowing what that show of bravery cost her. He held her gaze as he asked, gently as he could, “How would your death help either of your children?”
She’d no answer to that, but words spilled out regardless. “If I’d stayed at the wagon, we would have been captured together, Jacob and I. I’d prefer even that to this unbearable separation.”
“I understand,” he said, knowing she could never grasp just how much. “But if you’d been taken together out of that wagon and they let you live despite birthing a baby on the way, you’d not have been kept together long. I couldn’t say what would’ve happened to you, but Jacob still would’ve been taken and given to someone who’d lost a son or brother or sister.”
He saw the sweat bead up along her hairline. “They wouldn’t keep a child from a mother standing right in front of their eyes, would they?”
Rather than answer that, Jeremiah asked her a thing he’d been mulling over for days. “Would you consider Jacob to be brave?”
Her gaze sharpened. “Why do you ask?”
“I ask because the Indians might kill a tearful, whining child afore they got him back to one of their towns.”
He might have phrased that better. Even by firelight he could see Mrs. Inglesby blanch.
“He is brave,” she said. “This wild country didn’t frighten him. He went boldly where I feared to go, but now I shall follow him and be no less courageous. I am in earnest, Mr. Ring. I won’t be left behind.”
Her color had returned as she spoke, but Jeremiah figured his next words would steal it again. They had to be said.
“I see that plain, Missus. I just want to be sure you know finding your boy mightn’t be the hardest part of getting him back.”
It was small for a canoe. Constructed of elm bark, it was meant for two, three bodies at most. With the cradleboard propped against the pack before her, braced between her knees, Clare clutched the sides of the conveyance as Mr. Ring shoved away from the bank. There came the buoyance of the water’s embrace, the push of the current, the rocking as Mr. Ring boarded. Clare expected the canoe to tip, but in seconds he’d settled his lean frame before her, paddle in hand, and was guiding them upriver along the Virginia shore. Forsaking civilization as she’d known it. Her belly twisted at the thought as she fretted over what lay ahead, including coming face-to-face with Philip’s murderer. Logan.
“They wouldn’t keep a child from a mother standing right in front of their eyes, would they?”
Mr. Ring had evaded that question. Thinking of why that might be, sweat prickled along Clare’s hairline and a clammy weakness washed down her limbs. She’d heard of white children taken by Indians, taught their words and ways, absorbed into that life until they forgot who they’d been…
“How would your death help either of your children?”
She glanced down at the tiny face looking back at her from the carrier’s confines, wide eyes dark like Philip’s blinking at the sun-glare off the water, oblivious to the peril into which she was bound.
Was it fair to this child, endangering her for her brother’s sake?
Fair or not, Clare had made her decision. Still she couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder at the settlement shrinking in the canoe’s wake, at the shifting traffic of rivercraft and people along the muddy bank.
“The Beautiful River.”
She’d only partially caught Mr. Ring’s words. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, turning to view the back of his head.
Mr. Ring showed her his profile. Like his face in general, his nose was long, with a slight arch near its base. His beard, fuller than it had been at their meeting, still hugged the contours of his jaw. “It’s what the French call the river—la Belle Rivière. The Senecas call it Ohi:yó. Good River. To the Shawnees it’s the Spaylaywitheepi.”
She didn’t ask what that last name meant. Perhaps the same as its other names. Good. Beautiful. Clare found the river neither, despite its impressive features—over nine hundred miles long, a mile wide in places, though not that far upriver. Philip had talked of it rapturously. To her it was the place on the map’s edge where men drew the figures of strange and forbidding creatures. A hazard to be crossed only under the gravest compulsion.
They were passing the mid-channel island, the river widening to the left. To their right a flock of ducks veered away into a stand of cattails growing thick along the bank. A high ridge on the Virginia side closed in, its feet planted at the water’s edge. It loomed above the river, thickly wooded, blocking the sky. Clare glanced back for a last glimpse of Wheeling before the ridge moved between, closing off the sight and any possibility of remaining in its relative safety.
She faced forward as Jeremiah Ring’s strong shoulders bent to the paddling. At least she still had this man to guide her, though he might be taken away at any moment. Or choose to take himself away. No matter. With or without him she would keep looking until she found Jacob. She would search under every stone, behind every tree, inside every heathen hut she could force her way into.
Either she and her children would emerge from that wilderness together, or none of them would.
“Yellow Creek’s just there, other side of that bluff. Town’s farther up the creek.”
Mr. Ring’s voice startled Clare. It was the first he’d uttered for hours and, lulled by the river’s rushing, she’d dozed while the baby slept. Looking ahead, she saw the bluff that met the water’s edge, then looked across the river to the Virginia side and saw a stretch of bottom land, log structures visible among the trees. The scene was peaceful, bathed in the slanting gold of late afternoon. “Is that it—Baker’s post?”
“It is, but look there.”
She followed his nod to see a lone warrior in a canoe had rounded the bluff at the mouth of Yellow Creek, coming toward them with grim face, purpose in every paddle stroke. As fear gripped Clare, Mr. Ring called to the warrior, a stream of gibberish that flowed off his lips with a rhythm odd to her ears.
Recognition came into the approaching Indian’s face but didn’t soften his expression.
The warrior was bare-chested, tattooed across his cheekbones and down his arms. A leather band held black hair back from a low brow, revealing ears pierced and ringed with copper
hoops and beaten discs; one side of the headband secured a hawk’s feather, its tip dangling above the warrior’s bare shoulder. As he brought his canoe alongside theirs, his dark gaze flicked past Mr. Ring and settled on Clare, as far from welcoming as winter was from summer.
As words were exchanged, Clare sat mute in the canoe behind Mr. Ring with nary a clue to discern whether they were being warned off or it was the weather being discussed, but when the warrior’s gaze dropped to the cradleboard at her knees, a fresh surge of fear burned in her throat.
Abruptly he tore his gaze away and dug his paddle deep and propelled his canoe back toward the creek mouth. Jeremiah Ring dipped his paddle; they followed in the Indian’s wake.
“What is happening?” Clare demanded as they approached the creek mouth. “Was that Logan? Did you speak to him of Jacob?” She hadn’t heard her son’s name uttered. She did hear the near-panic in her own voice.
“Steady yourself, Missus. Whatever may come, you need to stay calm. Silent too, can you manage it,” he added with a touch of wryness so faint she might have imagined it. “I know that warrior. Tall Man was with us the morning we made it across the river to Baker’s. I told him I wished to speak to Logan.”
“You didn’t ask—”
“I told him you travel with me. Under my protection. We’ve been given welcome, but also an escort, for which I’ve been beseeching the Almighty since I got into this canoe.”
“Why? I thought you were friends with these Indians.”
“I am, but these people are grieving a great loss and betrayal. Hold that notion in your mind, whatever happens.”
“Will they deny us aid as revenge…because I’m white?”
Mr. Ring glanced back at her. “No telling how this’ll go, other than they won’t harm you. Not while you’re with me.”
Clare’s mouth had dried. Fear spread through her like a poison, seeping outward from her center.
The moment she caught a whiff of wood smoke, they glided around a curve in the river and she spotted what must be Logan’s Town among the trees, though it looked like no proper town she’d ever seen and more populated than she’d expected.
