The Frontiersman’s Daughter

by Laura Frantz

  Lael took off her bonnet, the fabric limp and lifeless in her hand, the dye long since washed out. Though the sun couldn’t touch them through the thick stands of timber, the woods were nearly suffocating. Even the mare turned mulish. Stopping at every creek and branch, they chewed on ginseng root to revive themselves.

  Toward nightfall they found themselves high atop a rocky ridge where the air was thin and pure and the sound of pigeons punctuated the growing gloom. Weary, Lael studied the one-room cabin in their path, mountain laurel hugging its walls as if hiding it from passersby. She doubted there were many. A rail fence zigzagged across the yard, penning in poppies and hollyhocks, bellflowers and foxglove, reminding her of her mother’s own.

  “I misdoubt even the Indians could find us way up here even if they wanted to,” she said as they drew nearer.

  A woman, lean and brown as a strip of jerky, stood in the doorway as if expecting them. There was no porch, but a fine rock chimney climbed one wall, puffing smoke. As she dismounted Lael lost her bearings and swayed, then felt her father’s hard hand steady her. She’d not make a fool of herself and faint, she determined. She reckoned she’d caused enough trouble for one day.

  After a long night on hard ground and nothing to eat, they were welcomed with a water bucket and gourd dipper. Lael drank thirstily, standing apart from her father and the only granny she’d ever known. They spoke in low tones and she could only guess what it was they said, struck by her pa’s sudden talkativeness. The woman who listened was no stranger, and Lael felt relieved at the very sight of her.

  A great aunt in the Click clan, Ma Horn was a spinster whom some said had a horde of shillings stashed away beneath the thatch of pea vine and clover around her cabin. But no one truly knew, for Ma Horn was more interested in the ailments of others than telling secrets about herself. She’d come to Kentucke on Pa’s second foray years before, the only woman among eighteen men. Together they’d built the cabin in the tiny clearing, a place few had seldom seen. Ma Horn was often on the move, dispensing tonics and herb bundles, and usually came to them.

  “Come in the cabin, Lael, and rest a spell,” she finally said, wiping gnarled hands on a worn apron.

  Lael. Lay-elle. The genteel pronunciation of her name was not lost on Lael. Of all the Click clan, Ma Horn was the only one who could pronounce her name properly. Not hard and fast like Ma spoke it, often in a fit of temper, nor the neglectful way Pa had of just calling her “Daughter,” but soft and dreamy as a song. After all, she’d been named after Ma Horn’s own mother.

  She watched as her father turned and rode off down the mountain without so much as a backward glance. The slight stung far more than Ma’s smack, and she bit her lip before turning and following the old woman into the tiny cabin. Once inside the gloom made her pause. Only one window, a stingy square above a trestle table, let in light. In the corner was a feather bed, the once fine coverlet white as a cloud. A single chair sat to one side of the fireplace. Everything was as clean and spare as could be.

  Without a word Ma Horn removed the lid from a black kettle and forked a potato onto a wooden plate. A slice of hoecake and some bacon followed. Without being told, Lael took a seat at the table and ate everything without a word, aware of being watched. Afterward she fell back on the feather tick and went to sleep.

  When she opened her eyes she spied what seemed to be a hundred sundry baskets suspended from the cabin ceiling. Without stirring, she watched Ma Horn move about, using a long-handled wooden hook to fetch this one or that. Remembering what day it was, Lael nearly groaned as she turned over and buried her face in the feather tick. Images of Susanna in her heirloom wedding dress, of trestle tables mounded with roast meats and ripe vegetables and stack cakes, of old Amos’s fine bow hand as he pulled out his fiddle, threatened to undo her.

  She shut away the thought of Susanna’s dismay but had less luck with Simon. What would he think in her absence? Pondering it all, her disappointment was bitter and complete. By supper she was nearly sinking. Even nature seemed unkind, the day dawning bright as a bride, then fading to fill the sky with a full moon. A lover’s moon.

  If Ma Horn noticed her distress, she made no mention of it. As she packed her clay pipe full of dried tobacco crumbles, Lael reached into the hearth embers with a little shovel and retrieved a live coal with which to light it.

  From outside the open door came the plaintive sound of doves cooing. Listening, Lael felt almost at home. She loved the mountain silences, so different from the river bottoms below. In times past this place had eased her heartache; perhaps now it might even dull the sting of Ma’s slap and Pa’s forgetfulness in saying good-bye.

  At her feet lay a tangle of honeysuckle vine, soaked and set for weaving into baskets. Ma Horn had taught her the art years before when she’d toddled behind her in the woods. She was glad to be occupied, her hands deftly working the handles first, then the baskets themselves, finally joining the two.

  Across from her, Ma Horn puffed contentedly on her pipe, watching her weaving. Tendrils of tobacco smoke encircled them, oddly fragrant. She was so often quiet, like Pa himself, and Lael felt a little start when she finally said, “So Captain Jack’s come a-courtin’.”

  Her hands stilled on the basket. “Who?”

  “The tall Shawnee who come by your cabin.”

  The tall one. Lael felt a small surge of triumph at learning his name. Captain Jack. Oddly, she felt no embarrassment. Lifting her shoulders in a slight shrug, she continued pulling the vines into a tight circle. “He come by, but I don’t know why.”

  “Best take a long look in the mirror, then.”

  Lael’s eyes roamed the dark walls. Ma Horn didn’t own one.

  “Beads and a blanket, was it?”

  She nodded and looked back down. “I still can’t figure out why some Shawnee would pay any mind to a white girl like me.”

  Ma Horn chuckled, her face alight in the dimness. “Why, Captain Jack’s as white as you are.”

  “What?” she blurted, eyes wide as a child’s.

  Ma Horn’s smile turned sober. “He’s no Indian, Shawnee or otherwise, so your pa says. He was took as a child from some-wheres in North Carolina. All he can remember of his past life is his white name—Jack.” She paused as if weighing what she knew. “You could say he and your pa are right well acquainted. He was one of the warriors who captured him and his men and carried them to the Falls of the Ohio.”

  Listening, Lael looked back. Her recollection of the young warrior standing outside their cabin was as fresh as yesterday. Silver arm bands. Buckskin breech-clout. She’d counted three eagle feathers fluttering from his dark hair. The telltale trade blanket had been draped over one broad shoulder, and his skin was baked the color of dried blood. Captain Jack looked Shawnee to the core.

  She suppressed a sigh. “Ma nearly had a fit, finding six Indians at her door.”

  Ma Horn drew deeply on her pipe. “And you didn’t?”

  “I . . .” Lael left off, unable to sort out the tangle of emotions she’d felt at their coming. Fear. Curiosity. Fascination. Shame. “It’s been hardest on Ma,” she lamented, looking down at her basket.

  Ma Horn nodded sagely. “I reckon she don’t like the reminder.”

  So that was it. Ma’s black mood hinged on being confronted with a past better left alone. Lael looked hard at Ma Horn, free to ponder it all for the very first time. She felt a sudden stab of sympathy for her moody mother. Was she now reliving the ugly day of Pa’s capture? Her own disgrace? Could she ever forget the shock of his homecoming or the ensuing silence that shut them out and seemed to overlook two lost years? When they thought the worst was over, the Canes and Hayes clans had brought about a court-martial branding him a traitor. Had that returned to haunt her too?

  “Some family skeletons are best left buried,” Ma Horn said, interrupting her reverie.

  Lael sighed and set down the basket. “Seems like the Clicks have more than their share.”

  The old wom
an’s face creased like a dried apple when she smiled. “We ain’t a boresome bunch, are we?”

  Lael shot her a wounded look. “Am I supposed to be proud of that?”

  “Beats cryin’, don’t it?”

  Lael swallowed down another sigh and looked at the finished baskets at her feet. Tomorrow they’d fill every one. The long days offered plenty of daylight to wander the woods, and a huge harvest still waited. As if pondering the work ahead, Ma Horn rose from her rocking chair and bade Lael good night, taking a small pallet in the corner and leaving Lael the prized feather tick. Though she’d protested, Ma Horn wouldn’t hear otherwise.

  Left alone, she moved the tallow candle closer and took Simon’s note from her pocket. Smoothing the crumpled paper, she wondered if Ma Horn watched her from the shadows. The bold words still seemed to leap off the page. That he’d remembered her middle name and signed off with his own was almost intimate somehow. But it was what he didn’t write that held her. Simon Henry Hayes was in need of a wife and he meant to have her.

  She expelled a rush of air, suddenly sleepy, wondering when her father would come back to fetch her. How had he and Ma explained her absence at the wedding? Likely, they hadn’t. Her disappearance would simply be another secret whispered of in the settlement. Just one in a long line of secrets.

  Truly, she thought wearily, the Click clan is rife with them.

  6

  Lael and Ma Horn traipsed from hollow to cove, then ridge and river bottom and back, baskets adorning their arms like jewelry. Every morning they would go gathering once the dew was dried, with nary a thought for the heat. Though her feet felt scalded, Lael refused to complain, knowing she’d toughen in time.

  “Take care to find four of the same plant before you take the one, lest they won’t grow back,” Ma Horn cautioned her, standing knee deep in a patch of boneset.

  Lael helped strip the tiny white flowers and leaves from the stalks, listening as Ma Horn talked.

  “Boneset tea will nearly always break a fever, but it’ll make you sick if you take it hot. Now, look at this Jack-in-the-pulpit. Take this here hoe and dig some roots. Nothin’ better for snakebite.”

  Up so high, Lael seemed to shed her burdens. Thoughts of Captain Jack were fleeting, if at all. She had less luck with Simon. The note remained in her pocket, perused in solitary moments when she relieved herself behind a bush or tree. With Ma Horn busy stuffing her head full of herbal lore, Lael felt she was back in settlement school again, only the learning was different and altogether more pleasurable.

  Unexpected riches bloomed around every bend. Golden ginseng. Velvety sumac. Indian peaches and pale red serviceberries. Lael would bend down a limb and stand and eat her fill before filling her basket. Once back at the cabin, they dried herbs and berries on strips of chestnut bark in the sun. A butter churn was filled to the brim with blackberry wine. Lael looked about in wonder as every barrel, bucket, piggin, and washtub seemed overflowing with nature’s offerings.

  Ma Horn never stopped until nightfall when she’d crack the cabin door and sit and smoke her pipe. Her rifle was ever near, a reminder of troubled times. Lael wondered if she used it for much other than meat. She didn’t know what one old woman and an older gun could do against even one Indian but held her tongue.

  Each evening Ma Horn would make a tonic, one for herself and one for Lael, and Lael would try to guess which herbs she’d used by the way they scented the room.

  “Take this basswood blossom tea,” Ma Horn urged. “It’s good for female troubles. I’ll settle for some clover. It’ll help me to sleep.”

  “But I don’t have any female troubles,” Lael said. “Leastways, not bodily.”

  “Well, fine and dandy, just drink it down anyway. It does a body good.”

  June melted into July. The woods were kiln hot, flowers and berries bursting forth before their time. Lael felt feverish and wondered how her mother’s garden fared. Up so high, Ma Horn had no garden to speak of. Most everything she ate she ate wild from the woods. Meat and meal were traded for her herbs, but when her larder ran low, she simply prayed and it was provided.

  “The Almighty knows what I need before I ask Him,” she’d say, “but I ask just the same.”

  Lael wondered if the Almighty knew she needed to stay atop Pigeon Ridge, out of sight and trouble. She missed home, but not Ma’s fractious temper. Once Pa came and left a sack of salt, but they didn’t see him, busy as they were gathering wads of wild grapes and Indian peaches to dry. Although he wasn’t there, she sensed he was often with her. Comforted, she clung to this whenever she felt afraid, when the shadows of twilight fell and she imagined she heard Indian drums in the distant darkness.

  As the days melted together they worked feverishly to harvest all they could, for it would keep them—and the settlers—in good health through the coming winter. When the gathering was done, they simply filled the hours a different way, distributing tonics and herb bundles all over the settlement. Once, Lael awoke to find Ma Horn gone, but by dusk she’d returned with a fresh ham to hang and a mess of beans as payment for a birth. Twins, she said.

  “Ain’t you ever fretful, Ma Horn?” Lael asked, staring pensively at the dark woods.

  But Ma Horn just chuckled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “If them Indians want my old hide, they can have it.”

  Lael found it hard not to laugh at the sight of her on old Soot, her black-clad legs thin as broom handles, one stiff petticoat rising above boots bearing silver buckles. With her black bonnet on her head, she looked dark and pensive. Like a crow, Lael thought.

  “I believe your pa’s fixin’ to come get you,” she said in early August. “I’ll sure be lonesome when you go. But before you do, there’s one last call we need to make.”

  The intensity of her tone made Lael wary. “Where to?”

  Ma Horn looked straight at her. “Your Uncle Neddy.”

  She felt her mouth go slack, then she recovered and looked around for the mule. She’d not thought of Neddy since Susanna had mentioned him in early summer and revealed that his land bordered Simon’s own. What would Pa think? Ma? Neddy’s face came to mind, more shadow than substance. She’d spent years trying to put his memory down only to have it resurrected twice now.

  Ever perceptive, Ma Horn studied her and said, “You still sore about it all?”

  Lael shrugged, her face as stoic as her father’s. The youngest of the Click clan, Neddy looked enough like Pa to be his twin, and some said this was the reason Ma ran off with him. But to Lael they were as different as sugar and salt. While Ezekial Click was taciturn and callous, Neddy was like his name, affable and dreamy, tending his crops by day and reading poetry by night.

  Ma Horn’s voice was gentle yet firm. “Your ma thought your pa was dead, understand.”

  But he wasn’t. She bit back the retort and stared straight ahead. If not for the Hayes clan, who would have taken her in when she’d been left at the fort? Though Ma had come to her senses in just a few days, the damage was done.

  “I remember how excited you was when it was your mother’s time,” Ma Horn said quietly, getting back on the trail. “I thought for sure the way she was carryin’ spelled a girl.”

  Lael smiled wryly. Ransom Dunbar Click was hardly the girl she’d been hankering for. Even Pa had seemed surprised, as if he thought such dallying was sure to produce a female. Recently escaped from the Shawnee, he’d come in and held the infant up to the light. The tiny boy grimaced and opened wide blue eyes. Looking on, Lael thought he was the handsomest baby she’d ever seen, no matter who’d fathered him.

  “One Click’s as good as another,” Pa had said with a shrug, handing him back to Ma.

  And so it was that Uncle Neddy, a bachelor recluse, fathered his first and only son. Pa’s revenge was to keep him.

  “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Uncle Neddy since Ma ran off with him,” Lael told her.

  “Well, time’s a-wastin’, ” she said.

  The trip to Uncle Neddy
was not a simple social call. As they neared his home place, Lael remembered he’d never married and rarely went to the fort named after his brother, even in times of Indian trouble. Though he’d once been a beloved uncle, Lael felt he was dead to them. His name was never mentioned, at least not in their own cabin.

  But now, riding nearer, the past was fast unfolding and curiosity overcame her with every step. “What’s ailin’ Uncle Neddy?”

  “Settlement fever.”

  Lael shuddered. The malady was generous with its misery, sapping the life from many a settler, fooling them into a period of wellness only to take them down at a later date. “You see him often?”

  “Often enough. He’s in need of an herb bundle now and again.”

  “What do you suppose he’ll do when he catches sight of me?”

  Beneath the black bonnet came a chortle. “What’ll you do when you catch sight of him?”

  Lael fell silent, unable to say.

  Ma Horn continued, her voice a bit hushed, as if sharing some family secret. “Neddy’s changed a mite. I give him a Bible sometime back, after all the trouble. He was always one for readin’, if you remember. Before long I began to see a change in him. Turns out he can quote whole passages by heart. All that bitterness toward your pa—his lonesomeness for your ma— just left him. I reckon if you spend enough time in the Word it changes you, just like Scripture says.”

  Lael thought of their Bible at home, rarely removed from its wooden box. Only in times of stress did Ma reach for it. And Pa, never.

  In the distance, Neddy’s cabin was nearly as small as Ma Horn’s, hemmed in by corn on all sides. Lael flicked a yellow jacket off her sleeve and tried to swallow, but her throat was so dry she felt strangled. The sun was directly ahead and heat shimmered all around them, the land giving off its rich, ripe scent. They dismounted and from somewhere—the fields?—Neddy appeared. Lael took off her bonnet and flipped her heavy braid back over one shoulder, her feet in a firm stance that belied her skittish feelings.