Cherokee Storm

by Janelle Taylor

  “It’s getting late,” Drake said loudly, stretching his arms up, making a deliberate show for the circle of men around the fire. “You’d best get into our tent, woman. I’ll join ya soon as I’m done with my meat.” Amos Tyler chuckled, and Drake grinned at him. “A man needs his rest after a hard day, don’t he?”

  Shannon walked, chin up, back straight, to the ragged tent. One pole leaned and the back was pitched higher than the front. She threw open the entrance cover and stooped to duck inside. Inside, firelight filtered through the rotten seams and the thin material of the walls. A bedroll lay in the far corner. On the ground cloth, almost blocking the doorway, Drake had thrown his saddlebags.

  She was about to toss them against the wall when it occurred to her that there might be a knife or even a pistol inside. She had unbuckled the left pouch and begun to rummage through the contents when Drake came into the tent.

  “Get out of my stuff.” He grabbed her arm and twisted her around to face him. “What are you looking for?” He tried to kiss her and she turned her head away. “I always did like a little fight in a woman.”

  She smacked his face, and he pushed her down.

  “We can play rough if you want to.”

  Frantically, she grabbed the saddlebags and threw them at him. A leather-bound book fell to the floor. A patch of light shining through the half-open door illuminated the cover, and time seemed to freeze as Shannon stared at it. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. Volume 1.

  Drake swore. “Pick that up, bitch. Do you know how much that cost me?”

  He shoved her, but she ignored him. Suddenly, everything that had been troubling her about Drake Clark fell into place. The book was the key that unlocked it all. Damon was the reader. Drake Clark wouldn’t know what to do with a book if it hit him in the head.

  “Come here, woman.” He took hold of the collar of her bodice and ripped it. Tiny buttons spun against the tent sides and slid to the floor. He fumbled with the front of his trousers. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “You aren’t Drake, you bastard,” she cried. “You’re Damon.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Damon!” she screamed as loud as she could. He grabbed for her again, but she ducked out of the tent. “He’s a liar,” she yelled.

  “What the hell!” Nathan ran toward the tent.

  “He’s not Drake! He’s Damon! And he’s not my husband.”

  “What’s going on here?” Captain Sidwell demanded.

  “Attempted rape is what’s going on!” Shannon said. “This man isn’t my husband. He’s been lying to you all. He’s Damon Clark, Drake’s twin brother.”

  Nathan pushed her roughly out of the way and seized the front of Damon’s shirt as he came out of the tent. “Is it true?”

  Damon threw up his arm to protect his face as his father began to slap him across the face. Blubbering, he dropped to his knees. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he sobbed.

  Nathan drove a heavy boot into his son’s ribs. “Snivelin’ coward. Makin’ a fool out of me. You’re not fit to wipe your brother’s boots.”

  “Why?” the captain asked. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  Shannon stared at the man on the ground in disgust. She was no longer afraid of him. Strangely enough, she couldn’t even find it in her to hate him. “Because of him,” she said, pointing at Nathan. “Because Damon always came second. And maybe, when his brother was killed, he saw a chance to be first.”

  “I just wanted ya to love me like you did him,” Damon whined. “Drake got it all…and I just wanted what he’d stolen from me.”

  Shannon turned toward the redcoat officer. “Do you see what you’ve done? Now, will you do the right thing? Will you let me go free?”

  Sidwell looked from her to Nathan to Damon, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can’t go back to my commander and tell him that I left a white woman to the mercy of the Cherokee.”

  “Please,” Shannon begged Nathan. “Drake is dead. You don’t want me. Make him let me go.”

  Nathan kicked the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Wouldn’t be right,” he said. “You gotta come back with us. I think you’re crazy in the head. But, whatever you done, whatever you are, you’re one of us. You deserve better than torture and abuse by the savages.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong. Please, Captain. Reconsider.”

  “Can’t do it, madam.” Sidwell sighed. “It would mean my career.”

  Shannon lay alone in the tent with two soldiers to guard her, but she could not sleep. She guessed it to be sometime after midnight when she heard the sentry call out.

  “Who goes there?”

  “George Hatapi. I bring deer.”

  “That’s George, all right,” the sergeant said in a sleepy voice. “Why the hell didn’t you get back sooner, boy? I had more worms in my biscuit than meat on my plate.”

  “Deer runs far. You can eat in morning.”

  Shannon pushed aside the door cover and saw Strong Bow deposit two venison haunches next to the fire outside her tent. Slowly, he found rope and suspended the meat high enough off the ground that varmints wouldn’t disturb it between now and morning.

  “George sleep now,” he said.

  “George do that,” the stout sergeant replied. “And let me get some too.”

  As he walked from the circle of firelight, George, whom Shannon thought of only as Strong Bow, glanced meaningfully at her. She retreated to the back of the tent and waited.

  After perhaps half an hour, a whisper came through the tent wall. “Wife of Storm Dancer?”

  “Yes. I’m awake.”

  “There will be trouble.”

  She held her breath.

  “When fire arrows fly, go to the place where we drew water from the river.”

  “Is he coming for me?”

  “Tell my sister she need fear Gall no more.”

  “Wait. Tell me…”

  But Strong Bow was gone as silently as he’d come. In the semidarkness, Shannon took a bag containing flint and steel, a compass, a pair of warm, wool stockings, and Drake’s coat from the pile of belongings by the door. She put the fire-making tools, the compass, and the stockings in the inside pocket of the coat, and put the coat on. Locating a small hole in the tent wall, she began to unravel the threads, slowly making the tear larger.

  The night breeze off the river was cool, but perspiration beaded on Shannon’s forehead as an hour and then another slipped away. Had she dreamed that Strong Bow had come to bring her a message of hope? When dawn broke, would she be as much a prisoner as she had been at dusk?

  A long rifle cracked suddenly in the darkness, followed almost immediately by the roar of a Brown Bess. The sergeant shouted orders, and the camp dissolved into pandemonium. Men shouted and cursed. Horses neighed in distress. A mule broke free and galloped past the entrance to the tent, braying wildly.

  Shannon parted the rent in the tent wall and squeezed through. Overhead, it was raining fire arrows. Tents burst into flame. Keeping to the shadows of the trees, Shannon ran for the river.

  “Shawnee!” she heard Strong Bow shout. “Take cover! They have guns!”

  She glanced back to see the Delaware snatch a flaming arrow from the grass and plunge it into the roof of the officer’s tent. Suddenly, beyond the camp, near the entrance to the hollow, a wall of flame ignited. Another horse pulled free from the picket line. The loose mule dragged a long rope and the blazing remains of a tent attached.

  “Fire!” Captain Sidwell ordered. “Fire!”

  Another gun went off, and a soldier screamed. “You shot my foot, you fool!”

  Sheer panic broke out as ammunition boxes, stored under sailcloth, near where the pack animals had been tethered, began to explode. The other four mules went wild. Men dove for the ground and covered their heads with their arms as mules and riding horses kicked and bucked and plunged through the wall of fire to freedom.

  Shannon stood by the river, staring in am
azement as three horses leaped through the conflagration and galloped straight into the camp. Her heart leaped into her throat as she recognized the big sorrel on the right. “Storm Dancer.”

  In the confusion, no one seemed to notice the strange horses, until Nathan Clark yelled and pointed his rifle at the animal. Shannon screamed as the shot echoed through the camp and over her head. Then man and horse leaped the last campfire, Storm Dancer leaned from his seat on the back of the sorrel and scooped her up.

  More shots rang out around them as the horse gave a great leap and landed in the raging river. Storm Dancer grabbed her hand and locked it in the sorrel’s mane. “Don’t let go!” he shouted in her ear. And then he released his hold on her and the horse and she lost sight of him as water closed over her head.

  She clung to the horse with both hands, trying to stay on the animal’s back. She could feel the powerful muscles surging beneath her, hear the terrified whinny of the beast as the water pulled them down a second time.

  Storm Dancer. Storm Dancer. Her world was confined to that one thought. But she could not release her hold on the stallion’s mane. He sank, he swam; he thrust his great head into the air, desperate for air.

  Shannon gasped as water poured in her nose and mouth. She was blind, deaf, but she could not let go of life. And somehow, against the rush of water and the peril of the rocks, the horse fought on.

  …Until her strength gave out, her fingers weakened, and she lost her grip on the sorrel’s mane and was swept away by the force of the river.

  Storm Dancer kissed her. His breath was warm on her face, his tongue rough and scratchy. Scratchy? Shannon opened her eyes and found the stallion standing over her, nuzzling her with his velvet nose.

  She coughed, sat up on the sand, and vomited half a river. The horse looked on sympathetically. She could hear the roar of the river, but she couldn’t see it. Low tree branches and ferns blocked her view of the waterway.

  She shivered and looked down. She had only her bodice and part of her shift left. One moccasin and Drake’s coat were gone. She was bruised and sore, but clearly not dead. No one who was dead could ache in so many places at once.

  Vividly, memories of the fires and the plunge into the river swept over her. And then, sorrow, such as she had never known gripped her, seeping through blood and bone…

  Storm Dancer was gone. She had lost him. He’d given his life for her. She wanted to weep, but her grief was too deep for tears. She wanted to scream, but she had given her last ounce of strength to the river.

  How could she go on without him? “My love,” she whispered hoarsely. “My darling husband. I will never—” The words caught in her throat as she saw the rawhide rope around the sorrel’s neck.

  Someone had tied the horse to a tree. Someone had found her here and left her. Strong Bow? Had he pulled her from the river? If he had, she almost wished he hadn’t bothered…. Better to have drowned with Storm Dancer. How could fate be so cruel…that her one love could save her and die in the trying.

  “Storm Dancer,” she whispered.

  “Ma-ry Shan-non.”

  She stiffened. Was she losing her mind? If she was, she didn’t care. Being mad was better than never hearing his voice again. “I’m here,” she said.

  “I would hope so.”

  She stared in disbelief as the branches parted and Storm Dancer appeared. Grinning. In his arms, he carried a buckskin hunting shirt, a fur blanket, and a pair of moccasins.

  “How does it feel to be a dead woman, wife?”

  She punched him hard in the arm, aiming for the scar he’d taken in battle against the Shawnee. “You’re alive? You let me think you were dead, and you’re alive?”

  “Yes, I’m alive, and so are you.” He raised an eyebrow. “But the English believe we are dead. It was smart of you to leave your skirt and a hank of your hair on the rocks.”

  “My hair?” Her hand flew to her head, to the spot that ached the most. Sure enough, she was missing a patch of hair. “My hair.” Now she burst into tears, and he dropped the blankets and clothing and pulled her against him.

  “Shh, shh, heart of my heart. It will grow back. And you are beautiful to me, with hair or not.”

  “You left me,” she protested between sobs. “I thought you were drowned, and you left me.”

  “My stallion was here to watch over you. And I needed to get the things I’d left on the mountain. I could not let my wife freeze, could I?”

  “But I don’t see how…” A fresh flood of tears swallowed her words.

  “I have spoken with Strong Bow. He found your skirt and your hair and took them to the English captain. They believe you are dead. We are safe in these mountains, Spring Rain. Safe to live out our lives, have children, and watch them grow.”

  “Truly?” she asked him. “Are we really safe? Can we be together now, together forever?”

  “Forever is a long time, heart of my heart.” He kissed her again and he wrapped a warm fur around her. “But I will never leave you again. And if a stubborn prophet and a woman with eyes no human should possess can be happy, we will be.”

  She put her arms around his neck and kissed him until they both were breathless. “Take me home, Storm Dancer,” she murmured when they finally broke apart and gazed into each others’ eyes. “Take me home.”

  And he did….

  And thus was the prophesy fulfilled, that a wise woman of a noble clan should wed the great warrior Storm Dancer. And that together, these two would lead the Tsalagi to peace and security in a time when the drums of war echoed through the Smoky Mountains.

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2010 by Janelle Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-1933-6