The Frontiersman’s Daughter (4 page)

“Lael, I want you to water the beans a mite heavy this morning and then—” Ma came around the corner, seeing her daughter standing in front of the blanket she couldn’t hide. For a moment her expression was empty, then understanding dawned and she gave a startled cry.

With a ferocious jerk, Ma pulled the blanket from the pickets and rushed to the back of the cabin. Lael ran after her, aghast as her mother threw the gift into the fire. Billows of gray smoke poured forth as the heavy wool smothered the flames beneath the kettle.

“Nay!” Lael cried.

Pushing past her, she grabbed a corner of the blanket and pulled it free. Would her mother’s impetuous act bring death down upon them? Shawnee were watching from the woods— whether two or twenty did not matter. Frantic, she scanned the clearing.

Oh Pa, where are you?

Holding the blanket tight, she stamped out the fire from it with one moccasin, sickened as she did so. Did her actions encourage her Shawnee suitor? In saving the blanket did she somehow seal his ardor? If she’d been in doubt about the beads, the blanket confirmed her fears. One look at her mother’s face and she knew Ma surmised the same. The Shawnee had come calling again, and his intent was now clear.

The blue beads seemed to burn a hole in her pocket.

5

By sunset the air inside the shut-up cabin was stifling and still, and they could hear the cow bawling to be milked beyond the barred door. Lael peered through a crack in the shuttered window, searching for any sign of the Shawnee. A footfall on the porch made her breathless. When she heard the reassuring voice of her father calling her name, she fumbled with the latchstring and let him in.

Even before he set eyes on the fire-blackened blanket in the cabin corner, her tense expression told him what she couldn’t say. Setting his rifle and powder horn atop the trestle table, he listened as she poured forth her story. Unable to hide them any longer, she produced the blue beads. “I found these on the porch yesterday morning.”

Ma’s sharp intake of breath jarred her. She hadn’t meant to deceive, just mollify her ma. Why had she thought hiding them would be a simple matter? A lie always came to light. Pa had taught her to be truthful even if it hurt.

Her mother’s hand came down hard and swept the necklace off the table. The beads clattered to the floor but didn’t break. The leather string that bound them was too strong. Next she turned on Lael and smacked her hard, then ran weeping from the room.

Like a flustered squirrel, Ransom looked out from under the table where he’d been hiding and scampered up the loft ladder. The cheek that bore the stinging handprint led to a queer emptiness in Lael’s breast.

“Pack your things,” Pa told her. “We’re headed to Pigeon Ridge.”

Pigeon Ridge was miles away and already the twilight was falling fast. Seated behind Pa on a dun-colored mare, Lael watched as the dying sun pulled a purple curtain over the mountains and seeded the sky with a million stars. She knew they’d soon be benighted in the woods.
Better that
, she thought,
than a cabin crammed with ill will
. Evidently her father felt the same.

As they rode, she finally gave in to the question she’d longed to ask ever since the Shawnee first appeared in the cabin clearing. “Pa, I’ve been wonderin’ . . .” She swallowed hard, the words seeming to stick in her throat. “Are you afraid the Shawnee mean me harm?”

“I’m not fearful, just cautious,” he said evenly. “They’re somewhat chancy. Best stay one step ahead of ’em.”

“But I don’t want to cause trouble for Ma Horn,” she said quietly. “Seems like the Shawnee’ll be able to find me up on high same as at home.”

“Not likely. They’re a mite afraid of her.”

“What?” She leaned into his shoulder, breathing in sweat and damp linen.

“Every time she meets up with an Indian in the woods, she acts crazy or spouts Scripture at ’em so they leave her be. You’re safer with her than you would be locked up at the fort.”

Truly?
A tickled smile pulled at her solemn face, and she nearly laughed outright. She let the strangeness of the words seep over her and settle her. Now that he’d spoken, it seemed he’d left the door open for her to ask him a dozen other things, things no one had dared ask him, not even Ma. Quietly she rehearsed them in her heart.
Pa, did you like living with the Shawnee? Do you ever miss those days? Did they come by the cabin just to see you? What exactly did they say?

Taking a deep breath, she gathered her courage about her, then felt it dwindle. Last time she’d probed, he’d called her a gabby, yellow-haired gal and shut her out. Maybe she had no right to ask about his past. But it seemed that his past was now intruding on her present in a bewildering way.

As they brushed by a sorrel tree she stripped off one narrow leaf, chewing it to quiet her thirst. If only she had something to still her heart
.
She fished in her pocket, empty of the beads now, and found Simon’s note alongside the old newspaper. This would have to do.

When the darkness hemmed them in and they could go no farther, they made a cold camp in a small clearing. Crickets hollered all around them and sang them to sleep as they lay on hard ground with nary a blanket. Before dawn they rose, dew covered and slightly stiff, and journeyed on.

After being tethered to the cabin for days on end, Lael felt a queer elation with every step, her spirits rising like the swell of mountains they traversed. At noon they crested a steep divide and looked down upon the river bottoms from which they’d come. Far below, the Kentucke River lay at low ebb, a startling sapphire blue.

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.