by Jamie Carie
He nodded. “And with a canoe still full of trade goods. Where is Julian? I’ll need him to help me unload and sort through it all.”
He took a step toward her. She took a step back.
His lip curled. “It never matters how long I’m gone, does it?”
Hope ignored the observation. “There is something I must tell you.”
“News?”
Hope hedged, not knowing where to begin. “Sit down, Joseph. Do you need something to drink? Some coffee?”
Joseph pulled a flask from the pocket of his long coat and grinned at her. “I’ve got what I need. What is it?”
“It’s the children. They have gone on a journey, an errand for Father Francis.” She rushed the next. “They should have been back by now. I’m getting worried.”
Joseph sank into a chair at their kitchen table, the flask resting on the top, loosely held, his dusty clothes clinging to his sweat. “What errand could Father Francis have?”
She waved a hand in the air. “Some books. The ones he has always mourned not having with him. He received a letter that they arrived in Kaskaskia. He couldn’t go himself, you know how frail he is getting, so he asked Isabelle and Julian to fetch them.”
“You allowed them to go to Kaskaskia? Why would you agree to a fool thing like that?”
Hope had been wondering that exact thing herself but tried to explain. “You know how Isabelle is… . She’s so restless. I thought,” she looked helplessly at him, then in a stronger voice said, “I hoped it might give her some purpose. For a time anyway. I did hire a guide. A well-renowned Indian guide.”
Joseph frowned, took a long pull on the flask, setting it down with a thump. “I could have gotten the books on my next trip. Might even have taken Isabelle with me this time. Who did you hire?”
Hope knew this was a lie. Isabelle had been begging to go with her father on these supply trips for years, and he’d always told her no, saying that she was a girl and girls didn’t run around with a bunch of men. It was an excuse, Hope knew. Joseph little cared that Isabelle had many skills and interests more common to men—hunting, shooting, sleuth-searching, and woodland forages. No, Joseph simply didn’t want his daughter to know what he really did on these trips. The drinking. The gambling. The women.
“Quiet Fox. I have it from a reliable source that he is a trusted guide.”
“Never heard of him. Who told you he was so trusted?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, then Hope flushed and turned away. “Just the word around town.”
“When did they go?” Joseph demanded while pulling off a boot and wiggling his toes to stretch them.
“Weeks ago. I should have heard from them by now.” Hope took another chair at the table and leaned toward him. “I feel something has happened. Something bad.”
Joseph scowled at her. “You should have waited until I returned to make this decision.”
“How could I?” She looked up at him, pleading. “You are never here.”
“That’s my work.”
Hope shook her head. “It’s your heart. It is never here.” She looked toward the ceiling, wondering if God heard her weak, sorrowful tone. “You are always off somewhere, looking for something that I can’t give you.”
Joseph scowled at her. “You know not what you say.”
Hope turned brisk, walking away from him, staring out the window at the town that was Vincennes. “I gave up everything to follow you here; you give up nothing for me and the children.”
Joseph stood, went to her, and grasped her hand and brought it to his lips. Gently, he kissed each knuckle. “I still love you, my Hope.”
She leaned her head to one side, tears springing up. He hadn’t called her that in so long. But she resisted. “I need more than the words this time.”
“What can I give you?” He looked around the room. “I have given you a home. I have provided for this family and abided your moods when I wanted more children and you refused me night after night, while you weep and wail in some kind of prayer. Some men think I allow you too much freedom.”
She wanted to rise up and rail at him but instead smiled a kind but sorrowful smile. “Those are good things, and I am thankful. But Joseph, you have pulled away from my heart. We two no longer seem to be one. And I don’t know how to regain that.”
“I will give you anything I can.”
“You want to give me something? Find our children.”
Joseph laughed, and it was a bitter sound. “Isabelle has likely convinced Julian to extend their little adventure, staying in Kaskaskia. She is the most misbegotten hellion I have ever seen.”
Hope screamed internally in frustration. Joseph never wanted to face anything, always believed whatever was most convenient for him. She watched in despair as he turned, scratching his head through his still-thick, dark hair and turned away from her, heading for their bedroom, likely to sleep until evening.
“If you will not go after them, then I must.” She stared into his dark-brown eyes, seeing the crinkles around them that didn’t used to be there, the lashes gone slack and white, seeing years that had passed by.
Joseph turned with a short laugh. “You do that.”
She pleaded, “They should have been back weeks ago. Anything could have happened.”
He sighed, rubbing his rosy face with one hand. “If they have not returned within another week, I will go.”
It was the best she was going to get.
21
Samuel saw her from the other side of the camp, nearly a week after their recapture, and hardly recognized her. Isabelle’s hair, that wild, living thing that became her like a best cloak, lay in tight braids on either side of her shoulders. Her head hung down, showing the tanned expanse of her forehead. She seemed to be looking for something lost on the ground. Two bright circles of red paint rode high on her cheekbones.
Her whole being appeared lost.
He shouted her name across the expanse of the camp, despite the attention it might draw. After a long moment, she looked up. He gasped at the shattered gaze, so unlike anything he’d ever seen, even on this ravished frontier. She didn’t shout back or even look in his direction. She appeared … afraid. What were they doing to her?
He knew she had been going along with anything they demanded since that night at the river, and he had been doing much the same, outwardly at least, making them believe in his acquiescence—all the while hatching new plans of escape. He hadn’t fooled them, he knew, but it was enough to keep his scalp intact. The tribe maintained hope of his full assimilation in time. He prayed time would become his answer—the second their guard was down—he would make good their escape. All he needed was time, and time was all they had.
But he would never leave here without her.
Until the opportune moment presented itself, he had no choice but to abide—abide their laughing ridicule as he pretended weakness where there was none, as he feigned admiration where he abhorred their methods and their means. It wasn’t that he had never learned anything from Indian ways. Oh yes, he’d learned them well. Back in Dunmore’s War, when he was still green, a runaway lad, he had seen firsthand the advantages of the natives’ ways over traditional English fighting techniques. Up against a tribal war party, the lines of red-coated soldiers, marching bravely in straight-backed formation, became a left-to-right death dance, convincing Samuel and others, George Rogers Clark among them, that there was much they could learn from the Indians in matters of warfare.
Honor came to a brave after death, not marching toward it. And so he had become one of them then, as much as he ever would. He and Clark had learned how to become hidden forest warriors, with cunning and skill. Lessons beyond the ken of hardened, disciplined British soldiers had come easy to the independent-natured colonists. After living in this land alongside the Indians for decades, the American frontiersmen had risen to the challenge, becoming death hunters with the eyes of the woodland on their side. They’d learned how to s
trike fear into the enemy’s heart with shrill battle cries, immobilizing them before they had a chance to lift their better weapons.
The Americans latched onto this unfamiliar warfare like puppies to a teat, knowing, somehow, in their desperation for this land, its sure sustenance. They were a new breed, these Americans. Able to take the best from each culture and make it their own. Able to rise up and fight with all that they embodied—Irish rebellion and independence, English endurance and confidence, German economy and warrior spirit, French artistry, African nobility, the joy of the Scots—and brought it all together in a melting pot of strength.
Samuel had seen it in their eyes when commanding a troop, the women’s eyes when waving their men off with tears and pride, and yes, even in the children’s eyes. The young boys would stand with pitchforks and field scythes waving above their heads, over their hard-won fields, determined to do a man’s work while their fathers left to protect it. These people hadn’t traveled a sea and left a country and their forebears for nothing. They would have a field of their own crop to defend, by the great Almighty!
It was a lesson ingrained in him, giving him an edge as a leader. He felt their passion, their pains to make it real. He knew, like he’d never known anything, that he was meant for more than life in his father’s straight-laced household. This was something he could help make happen.
This was his destiny.
Sometimes Samuel awoke suddenly from strange dreams of a time where people lived in huge cities of stone, their buildings crowded, reaching into the clouds, where the green and forest and woodland had given way to a hard, gray, people-packed civilization. But he didn’t feel sad when he dreamed it. He would awake with an indrawn breath of exultation. “What is it, Lord?” he would wonder aloud amid his tangled covers. “What do You have planned for this land?”
But the morning always dawned on the edges of a forest yet to be hewn, of green as far as the eye could see, of promise and sacrifice for that promise, of work and sweat beyond measure with an early death almost certain, of vision, a vision so strong that they didn’t really know where it came from, yet it lived like a fire in each of their hearts so that they were willing, eager even, to give up everything to possess it. This America. These Americans.
That was his daylight. But now, for the first time, Samuel wanted something more than acres of belly-filling dirt and a hand-hewn cabin to call his own.
He wanted a woman.
This woman with the wild hair that wrapped her when she danced.
And he would wait. Wait until he could snatch her back from the enemy haunting them both. He would ride off with this stolen prize. If he accomplished nothing else in his whole life, he would conquer this thing.
* * *
“JE M’APPELLE ISABELLE,” she whispered to the hide she was scraping, “so nice to make your acquaintance.” She curtseyed to the brown fur, hiding her smile at the absurdity and yet knowing that she must continue to do this. Something inside told her not to forget. She had promised to go by “Cocheta” now, and she was, gaining small ground of trust with the tribe, convincing them that they had finally conquered some small part of her. But secretly she rebelled. Since seeing Samuel across the camp, since hearing her name being called, she’d been shocked out of her slow slide into their ways. It had ignited a spark back to life inside her, like a lightning bolt. She would remember who she was. She would say it out loud at every opportunity.
* * *
HOPE ROSE EARLY, quietly packing, though something in her knew Joseph would wake up and see.
“What are you doing?” His voice was groggy with sleep, confused.
Hope turned, looking at him from over her shoulder. She was still a beautiful woman, her blonde hair darker now, pulled back in a messy knot at her nape, strands escaping in her early-morning haste, her eyes still sleepy but determined. “I’m going to Kaskaskia,” she said quietly, belying the fear within.
“I told you I would go in a week or two if they don’t return.” Joseph pulled on his breeches as he spoke. Going to the bedroom door, he leaned against the edge. “Come back to bed.”
Hope shook her head. “You have never listened to me before. I can’t expect that you will now.” She walked off toward the kitchen, intending to pack any means necessary to vital sustenance on a journey of this sort. What would she need most? She pondered her cupboards, hearing Joseph follow her into the kitchen.
“Just give it some time, for heaven’s sake,” he was mumbling as he pulled his shirt over his head.
Hope turned from her packing. She looked at him, felt the familiar attraction, and fought it. He was still a fine-looking man. A little gray in his hair, but that added an air of distinction. A broad, unlined, and rosy face. Eyes that twinkled when he was happy, snapped when he was impatient or angry or worse, frustrated by lack of understanding what was going on around him. She’d seen that face often in the rearing of their children. Joseph understood Joseph and little else. He was never one to be able to walk in another’s shoes. No, it was almost as if he expected that everyone else should wear his shoes. And if they didn’t, they were the ignorant ones.
Hope took a long breath and faced him. “I’m going. There is nothing you can do. Something is wrong, I know it. I have to go.”
Joseph looked off into the distance and scratched his head. “Can’t you wait a week? I have one more run, and then I will have some time. You can’t go after them alone.”
Hope shook her head sadly. “There is always ‘one more run.’” She paused, knowing the impact. “I am not going alone.”
His face reddened. He puffed out his cheeks like a bull ready to charge. “Who is it?”
Hope turned away, not able to face what was in his eyes. “You needn’t worry,” she said. “I will be safe.”
“Who is it?” he demanded. But they both knew.
Hope bundled some bread into her pack, followed by dried cherries, dates, persimmons, and jarred honey. “I ran into Adam while you were gone. He offered to help.” She dared not look at him in the ensuing silence.
Finally he said, “You would harlot yourself then? For the children, I am sure.”
She whirled on him. She had never been so angry. “Adam Harrison would never ask anything of me, and you know it. Shame on you for thinking such a thing!”
He nodded and smiled. It was the smile she dreaded, said everything she never was or could hope to be.
“The man is just biding his time, Hope. Waiting for the time I don’t make it back, some Indian’s arrow in my chest. Don’t be a fool.”
“Not every man is like you,” Hope said with quiet conviction. “He respects me.”
“Oh yes,” Joseph agreed. “He respects you all right. He will hold you on a pedestal until you succumb to it. That grand respect.” He turned, his hand flinging out toward her. “Go on with you then. Save your children. But don’t expect a home when you get back.”
Hope watched him trudge off to the bedroom, wondering how sure his threat was. There was fear inside her, a fear of losing him, though that had happened long ago. Fear of not finding a solid roof over her head when she returned. She reminded herself, as she turned to place the essentials of fire and bed in her pack, that her God was the God of the Israelites, a people that in their most abject sin had clothes that never wore out and food, the food of angels, that appeared with each morning dawn. She battled internally as she packed, not knowing the future, yet knowing, like only a mother does, that her children needed her and that, whatever the cost, she would go.
22
Isabelle stood with the women of her lodge house. Today was the day of the Green Corn Festival, a day of dancing and feasting to celebrate the emergence of the season’s first shoots of corn. The women of the tribe had been cooking all day to prepare for the great feast, assigning Isabelle the simplest of tasks. But before the feasting began, she had learned by the stilted speech and pantomime of her new mother, that there would be a ball game.
The trib
e of over two hundred had divided themselves, men against women, on either side of an open field. They waited as the old chief slowly made his way to the center of the grass. He held a ball in his hands and a gleeful smile on his weathered face. Suddenly, with more energy than he seemed capable of, he threw the ball high into the air. Everyone yelped and cheered, rushing forward toward the ball as the old chief hurried off to the side to watch.
Isabelle found herself running, not knowing the rules, not knowing what she would do should she happen to get hold of it. A young brave reached the ball first and kicked it toward a goal of two stakes on the women’s side of the field. One of the younger women quickly scooped it into her arms and began to run toward the other goal. Isabelle laughed, a little shocked, as one of the braves stepped into the girl’s path, wrapped his arms around her and shook her with such force that the tightly clasped ball fell from her arms. Isabelle was surprised when the brave didn’t scoop it up; instead he kicked it back into a large group of women and men.
Isabelle caught sight of Samuel’s blond hair gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. She ran toward him, dodging the running feet and flailing arms of her teammates. Reaching his side, she ran with him, and asked, laughing, “What are the rules?”
Samuel grinned back at her and yelled, “Get the ball through your goal. I think the women can carry it and throw it, but the men can only kick it.” He laughed. “All I know for sure is that they warned me not to touch it with my hands or …” He made a slicing motion across his throat.
Isabelle gave a quick nod. “I guess that makes us enemies.”
Samuel laughed, running toward the ball, “For this hour only, my sweet.”
Isabelle watched as Samuel tried to muscle his way through the throng of people toward the tan skin ball. She quickly sized up her opportunities and decided on a different tack, making her way toward their goal and into the open. She laughed as she ran, feeling light and happy, her hide skirts keeping her from breaking into a full stride.
