The Frontiersman’s Daughter Page 2

  The shoes fit, but barely. Lael stood unsteadily, accustomed to being flat-footed. It was sheer work to keep from wincing. A few sets of Roger de Coverley in these and she might lose a leg too. Still, she’d manage if it would please her ma.

  From the door, Ransom looked hard at her, then ran a grubby hand through hair as black as Ma’s own. “Do we have to stay for all the dancin’?”

  Ma gave a slight shrug and resumed her cutting. “You’d best speak to your sister about that. I believe she’s as intent on the dancing as you are on the wedding supper.”

  His eyes sparked and he looked at Lael. “Reckon you’ll get married next?”

  She nearly smiled, but the sweet thought was snatched away when she looked at her mother.

  Ma’s eyebrows arched. “Married? Well, I can’t imagine whom to.”

  “I can,” he replied with a wide grin. “Everybody in the whole settlement knows she’s sweet on—”

  “You’d best keep your tongue between your teeth, Son.” Pa’s chair, tipped back till now, came down with a decisive thud.

  The rebuke settled harshly in the still cabin, and Lael watched as Ransom scampered up the loft ladder out of sight.

  Looking after him, Ma’s voice wilted to a whisper. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Simon, Lael.”

  Simon. They could never speak of Simon civilly, if at all. He was a Hayes and belonged to that segment of the settlement Pa had blacklisted long ago. She was glad the dim light hid her face. Glancing toward the hearth, she found Pa had resumed his reading. Privacy in a cramped cabin was hard to come by.

  The snip of the scissors seemed to underscore Ma’s words. Her bent head nearly touched Lael’s own. “I don’t mind if you dance with him a time or two, but any more than that gives rise to gossip. The way he . . .” The cutting ceased as she groped for the right words. “The way he corners you for every single set is unseemly.”

  Lael took a deep breath. “It means little, Ma, truly. Simon taught me the steps when I lived with them years ago. We’ve been dancin’ together since I was Ransom’s age.”

  Ma’s mouth set in a firm line. “There’s no need to remind me of all that. Best leave the past alone.”

  At once Lael realized her error. “But I didn’t mean—”

  Ma began folding up the cut-up cloth, signaling an end to the conversation. Just as suddenly, Pa got up and unbarred the door, Nip and Tuck in tow. Lael fought the urge to follow him, to find some solace lest she spend another sleepless night. But he seemed in no more mood for conversation than her ma.

  Reluctantly, Lael climbed the loft ladder to where the shadows hid her as she shed her dress. Too weary to free her hair from its tight braid, she lay down atop the worn coverlet and let her gaze linger on the fitful form of her brother. He rolled this way and that in the trundle bed, as if trying to escape a bad dream.

  Bending low, she touched his dark hair, the ends curled with sweat. Tomorrow she’d teach him to make a fan from the old newspaper she’d seen spill out of the trunk when Ma was searching for the slippers. Perhaps they could sit on the porch come morning and fan themselves for a spell since Pa was allowing them to do little else. Being confined to the stifling cabin a second day couldn’t be borne.

  She’d sooner face the Shawnee.

  3

  The next morning Lael sat imprisoned on the porch behind the screen of roses. Done with churning, she collected the ball of butter and salted it, setting it in a covered crock to carry to the springhouse. Pale yellow light framed the eastern forest, and the woods were a symphony of sound. She looked up as a joree bird called from a laurel bush. The sound was so pure it seemed to pierce her with its sweetness. She waited a few seconds before she gave the answering call, smiling as it echoed back to her. She liked daybreak best, unsullied as it was.

  Every morning of her life she’d come out onto this porch to find things the way they’d been the day before. She loved the solid beauty of the barn and the skeleton of a fence that ran to the river and hemmed in the horses. The woods surrounding the cabin were ever changing with the seasons yet somehow stayed the same. Even the old door stone beneath her feet was as much a part of her as the roses that hid the lazy slant of the porch while attempting to climb into the cabin.

  She could hear Ma moving about with a kind of restless energy, not yet at work with her spinning wheel. Ransom was still abed and out of mischief, but Pa had been gone long before daylight. She caught sight of him now emerging from the trees, his rifle nestled in the crook of one hard arm. He wore the garb of the woods, buckskin breeches and long linen hunting shirt, heavily fringed to wick away water. She could see him scan the clearing, weighing every nuance and shifting shadow.

  He moved the quietest of any man she knew. Even his dogs had been trained to walk softly behind him, noses to the ground, nearly tripping over their cumbersome ears. Nip and Tuck had been yearlings when Pa led his first party of settlers over the Gap the Indians called Ouisita. No man had lived in Kentucke then, either Indian or white, though the Shawnee and Cherokee claimed it as a sacred hunting ground. She reckoned they still did, leaving plenty of sign in the settlement and taking what they pleased.

  Pa paused briefly to look east, and she did the same, her gaze lingering on the far mountains framed with yellow light. Was he remembering his roots or missing the land from which he came? She doubted it. He rarely spoke of his Quaker heritage, though Ma talked freely of her own family, English weavers who’d come to the colonies fifty years before.

  She always listened quietly as Ma shared memories of her loved ones, but to Lael they were simply names without faces, all of them. She’d never known anything but Kentucke, never been beyond the wilderness, nor wanted to. Ma’s talk of cobbled roads and church steeples and hordes of people pressed together in one place left her cold.

  Pa paused at the far end of the porch to drink deeply from a gourd dipper hanging above a piggin of water, his eyes on the woods all the while. For a man not yet fifty he looked older. Hardened, careworn. His tobacco-brown face was as lined as the marks on a surveyor’s map, but his frame was as lean and well muscled as that of a far younger man.

  Lael stood up slowly, the crock of butter at her feet. The half hour she’d spent churning had given her sufficient time to gather the courage to confront him. She simply had to know about the Shawnee—what they wanted and why he hadn’t moved them to the fort.

  “Any fresh sign, Pa?” Her voice shook a bit and belied her skittishness.

  He turned earnest eyes on her and took his time answering. “Aye. One Shawnee in particular.”

  One. The tall one? Somehow she sensed it was, and looked down at her apron, a flush creeping into her face. He was studying her again in that absorbing way that made her feel he knew her every thought—or worse, that she was somehow the cause of all the worry.

  “Any trouble elsewhere?” she asked.

  “None that I know of,” he replied, a wry twist to his mouth. “Just hereabouts with a gabby yellow-haired gal in an indigo dress.”

  Giving him a halfhearted smile, she fingered her heavy braid. “Ma keeps threatenin’ to shear me.”

  He shifted his gun to his other arm and returned his attention to the woods. “Reckon she thinks she’ll save the Shawnee the trouble.”

  At this she sobered, searching for a speck of teasing in his sober features. Suddenly the almost romantic notion of letting down her hair for all those dark warriors turned terrifying. “Pa, you don’t think . . .”

  He lifted linen-clad shoulders in a shrug. “With the British paying bounties for settlement scalps, it might prove a formidable temptation.”

  “But I thought—” She paused, pushing into uncharted territory with her next words. “I thought since you . . . knew them, lived with them . . .”

  A flash of something inexplicable crossed his face, and she sensed she’d gone too far. Never had they spoken of the past or the Shawnee, and doing so now seemed to bring about a wall that shut her out
. Stung, she sought for words to soothe the strained silence, but her mind emptied of anything but a simple “sorry.”

  Her lips parted, but before she could utter another sound, he said, “Stay close to the cabin.”

  With a warning look he was gone, leaving her alone with all her anxiety. She sat down hard in her churning chair, near tears, forgetting the crock of butter. Oh Pa, I’m sorry, truly sorry. But there are so many things I long to know. She watched him disappear into the woods leading to the river, fighting the urge to run after him. Reaching into her pocket, she removed the aged newspaper she’d meant to make into a fan for Ransom. Just this morning she’d remembered it, wedged as it was between the trunk and a wall, forgotten. Before she’d pocketed it she caught sight of three arresting words: The White Indian. Beneath this, in bold print, was her father’s name.

  Now, unfolding the paper, her own hands seemed to tremble. The Virginia Gazette was widely circulated in the settlement, Kentucke being thought of as an extension of that state. Sometimes Pa left copies of it about the cabin. But never before had she seen this. Dropping her head, she read quickly, hungrily, not wanting to be discovered, vowing to return it to the trunk when she was through. The entire front page was devoted to her father with a detailed sketch that was remarkably his likeness. Was this why Ma had kept it?

  The headlines presented the story of his captivity with startling simplicity. Though it had been well over six years since he’d disappeared, she knew the facts by heart. The day their world was upended, her father had been on a salt-making expedition for the settlement. This was tiresome, sweaty work, the steam of the huge kettles competing with the suffocating heat. But salt was survival, necessary for preserving meat and curing hides, and the salt-rich Licking River provided plenty.

  It had been summer and twilight, her father’s favorite time of day. She knew just how the river had looked then—a beguiling blue before giving way to silvery white to match the moon. Without so much as the rustle of a bush for warning, the Indians had surrounded them. Her father had been the first to lay down his rifle. Rather than fight, he’d surrendered.

  The very word seemed at odds with everything Pa was, yet that’s what he’d done. She fought the urge to ball the paper into her fist. What choice did he have when faced with ninety-three Shawnee? He’d been but one of twenty men from the settlement. Her father was no fool. She read further without wanting to, a hard knot forming in her throat.

  He soon learned the Indians were planning to attack Fort Click. With most of the settlement men away making salt, the stockade was easy prey. Certain all within would be killed or captured, her father had struck a bargain. He assured the Shawnee the fort was at its strongest and the planned siege would be a costly mistake. If the Indians would take him and his men prisoner instead, and assure them fair treatment, they could be ransomed to the British in the north for bounty.

  She stopped suddenly, the words a blur of black ink. All she remembered of her father’s absence was the hollowness of hunger and a loneliness she couldn’t name. The fort’s corn crop soon ran out and there were too few men to supply meat for all the women and children within. Babies died. An old man shot himself in the blockhouse. With the first snow came much sickness. And while they suffered, her father turned Shawnee.

  Unable to read further, she folded the paper and tucked it away, but the memory seemed to dog her as she did her chores. On her hands and knees, scrubbing the puncheon floor with sand and a bristle bush, she tried to forget about the past. At the same time, she made sure the paper was safe in her pocket. When she was alone again she’d read the rest.

  Toward noon, Nip and Tuck’s barking brought her back onto the porch. Tied up in the side yard, they were a welcome alarm and she relaxed at their halfhearted warning. In moments a familiar figure crossed the clearing on a big bay horse, copper hair bright as a candle flame. Lael flew off the steps, skirted the dogwood tree, and felt the cool breath of the stone springhouse as she passed.

  She could hear her mother’s frantic calling, but she kept on, scattering chickens and kicking up dust devils as she ran. Seeing Susanna turned Lael’s thoughts at once to Simon. Same astonishing hair. Eyes like chicory coffee. The familiar mouth and noble nose. But whereas Susanna was small, her brother was easily the tallest man in the settlement.

  As Susanna slipped to the ground, Lael hugged her wordlessly. Susanna studied her with a half smile, smoothing her wrinkled linsey skirts. “It’s been too long, Lael Click. How you keepin’?”

  “Right smart,” she said, her smile snatched away by the sight of Susanna’s father emerging from the woods behind them on a matching bay.

  Lael studied him, a bit breathless. Since when did Harrison Hayes set foot on Click land? The hard lines of his face were like limestone, and not a nod of acknowledgment did he give her, though she stood directly in his path. Spotting her pa along a rail fence in the pasture, he made straight for him, leaving the two girls alone.

  Susanna took the opportunity to pass Lael a piece of paper, folded tight. “From Simon,” she whispered.

  Startled, Lael slipped it in her pocket, tamping down the urge to open it in plain sight.

  “Pa’s here to settle a land dispute, if you’re wonderin’, ” Susanna told her. “I asked to come along—begged, nearly. I’ve been afraid you’ll not come to the weddin’. ”

  “Ma’s already at work on my dress,” Lael reassured her, turning to watch the two men.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Susanna said, standing beside her. “Isn’t it a wonder? I don’t think they’ve spoken since the courtmartial. But Pa’s desperate to settle this tetchy business with the Canes.”

  Lael nearly smiled at the irony. The Canes and Hayes, clearly the most contentious clans in the settlement, had brought about the court-martial against her father years before. Now Harrison Hayes had come begging. With Pa appointed as magistrate, what choice did he have? His only recourse was to ride clear to Virginia and seek counsel. Watching, she felt a tad uneasy . . . yet jubilant.

  Lael turned back to Susanna. “Only a few more days and you’ll be wed. You look wonderful—like a bride should.”

  “I’ll be glad to get the deed done and move on over to Cozy Creek. Will’s finally finished the cabin. He’s not built the barn yet, but your pa said he’d help.”

  “We’ll be glad to get you as neighbors,” Lael told her. “Pa’s always had a fondness for Will.”

  Will, but not Simon. If only he thought so well of Susanna’s brother. The court-martial had taken care of that, though it had been father, not son, who’d started it. A tiny flicker of hope rose in her heart. Perhaps now, with Hayes here, matters would mend.

  Susanna untied her bonnet and began to fan herself. “I’ll be glad to get shed of the fort, though Ma’s sad to be losin’ both of us at once. I guess you heard Simon left home in the spring. He has four hundred acres of his own now, surveyed by your pa and registered with the Transylvania Land Company.”

  Lael looked at her and the quiet fell between them like a curtain.

  “You didn’t hear, did you?” Susanna surmised. “Well, it’s true. Simon’s got a fine piece of property near your Uncle Neddy.”

  Lael’s surprise deepened. She’d not seen Simon for months, or Neddy for years.

  “I know there’s still bad blood between your pa and his brother,” Susanna said softly. “But Simon’s got a good neighbor in Neddy.” She paused as if weighing each word, her eyes on Lael’s. “Neddy asked Simon about you—said he’d like to see you.”

  Lael felt her color rise. “Seems like he’d rather see Ransom than me.”

  “A man ought to be able to see his own son.” Susanna’s voice was soft but filled with conviction, mirroring Lael’s own deep feelings, though she didn’t say so.

  “Ransom doesn’t know about Neddy,” Lael told her. Not yet. But everyone else in the settlement knew who sired Sara Click’s son.

  Susanna touched her arm. “I know you don’t like to talk
about the past, so we’ll just talk about the future.” Her tone turned a trifle teasing, the light in her eyes inviting. “I’ve been thinkin’— since Simon’s standin’ up with Will at the weddin’, and you with me, why not make it a double match? You’re nearly fourteen.”

  Fourteen to Simon’s twenty. Lael put her hand in her pocket absently, feeling for the note. Ma had been fifteen when she married Pa. And thirty-two when she ran off with Neddy. That memory wouldn’t budge, no matter what. She could still recall the precise shade of her mother’s dress the night she disappeared. An unforgiveable forget-me-not blue. Only six, Lael had been left at the fort and the Hayes clan had taken her in. Like a stray cat, some said.

  “I’d rather have you for a sister-in-law than anyone in the settlement,” Susanna went on with a winsome smile, filling the silence.

  “Seems like Simon should be the one askin’ me, not you,” Lael chided softly.

  “Maybe he is,” she replied, pointing to Lael’s pocket. With a smug smile she turned and climbed back up on her horse, the copper coil of her braid touching the bay’s broad back.

  Lael looked over her shoulder and found the two men still deep in conversation. Standing so far from the cabin left her feeling slightly skittish, though she knew Pa’s surveillance never ceased. She dried her damp face with the hem of her apron, looking askance at the noon sun.

  As if sensing her mood, Susanna glanced toward the woods. “What’s this I hear about the Shawnee comin’ to your cabin?”

  Lael turned back to her, wondering just how much she knew. “I don’t think they meant any harm. I wouldn’t be here if they did.” Even as she said it the remembrance brought heat to her face.