Courting Morrow Little: A Novel Page 2

  Moments before, Captain Click had escorted her to a crate, its top softened by a beaver pelt. Here she sat and partook of breakfast-some cold journey cake and lukewarm coffee. The rising sun skimmed off the water with an emerald shimmer, and she peered over the rim of her pewter cup, watching a heron take flight. The land was beginning to assume a familiar shape, like an old friend she'd been missing and was coming to know once more. They were rounding a bend in the river, slipping toward the southern shore, and it seemed she could reach out and touch the brush-laden bank.

  So lost was she in its wild beauty she started when Captain Click sat down nearby, rifle at the ready. But what was one gun against a canoe full of Indians? Though the polemen had pistols in their belts, she felt taut with tension, eyes returning to the north shore-the Shawnee shore-again and again.

  "I don't recollect putting you on watch this morning."

  The quiet comment took her by surprise. Did he miss nothing? "I'm just ... remembering, I guess" She read kindness and concern in his face and blinked to keep the sudden welling in her eyes from spilling over.

  He settled his gun across his knees. "Best think of the future, not the past:"

  "Yes;' she said, looking to the book in her lap. But how was she to do that when the past cast such a shadow?

  Last night she'd dreamed about Ma and Euphemia and Jess. The closer they drew to the Kentucke settlements, the more vivid were her memories, as wide and deep and dark as the river they now ventured down. They seemed to take her by the shoulders and shake her, making her recall every single detail she tried so hard to forget.

  It seemed her life had just begun when the warring Shawnee had come on their killing and kidnapping spree. She'd been but five then; now she was nearly eighteen. During those barren years, something else had occurred that continued to upend her. Something so frightening and memorable it had marked her like ink upon paper. She had been ten, and it was just her and Pa then, and Jess's shadow. A blizzard had been busy burying the cabin, and every so often she'd peer past the shutter and wish it would stop. It reminded her of the day her family died, when the fluffy tick had been torn open and feathers whirled like snow in the ransacked cabin.

  This night Pa was hunched over his Bible at the trestle table near the fire, preparing the Sabbath sermon. With Ma's apron wrapped twice around her, she worked near him, humming a little tune, setting out some salt and three pewter spoons badly in need of recasting. Venison stew bubbled over the fire, and she stirred it with a careful eye, thinking she'd made too much yet knowing why. For Jess, in case he came. Surely after just a few years he would not have forgotten the way home. Each night, she set a third place at the table, and when supper was done, she put his unused cup and plate away. If her brother did come home, she wanted him to feel welcome and see his place waiting, reassuring him they'd not forgotten.

  "Heavenly Father, we beseech Thee to forgive our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Bless this food to our bodies. And please bring our boy home. Amen:" Pa finished with a shine in his eyes, and she was glad he didn't look at her lest she bubble over herself.

  They ate in silence as the snow and wind worked to bury them. At least, Morrow thought, there'd be no Indians about on such a night, and she could rest easy for once. She was glad to see Pa eating heartily, helping his thin frame flesh out a bit.

  "You're getting to be a fine cook, Morrow," he said, taking more bread.

  Smiling, she refilled his bowl, but before she sat down, something thudded on the porch. Had the wind toppled the churn? She lit another taper, surprised to find her hands shaking. A second thud caused Pa to pause, his spoon suspended in midair. Their eyes locked as they weighed what to do. A third thud sounded, and they both stood.

  She scooted into the shadow of the corner hutch as he cracked open the cabin door. There, as if frozen to the porch, was a tall figure in a buffalo robe, the thick fur edged with ice. A trapper caught in the storm? A lost settler just shy of the fort? Not Jess. Disappointment covered her like a cloud. Pa welcomed the stranger in, then wrestled with the wind to shut the door. Through the stingy light of three candles, she stared as the man shed his wrap and let it drop, the heavy hide looking like a bison just felled in a hunt.

  Her lips parted, but she couldn't make a sound. A blur of beads and buckskin assaulted her, and she backed up further. In the tall Indian's arms was a smaller Indian. She watched as Pa took the boy and laid him across the clean feather tick of his own bed in a cabin corner. Dismay trickled through her dread. She'd just opened that tick and cleaned every feather before sewing it shut again. And now this dark and dirty boy ...

  "Morrow, get this man some stew and cider and I'll see to his son;' he called to her.

  His son? How did he know? Not a word had been exchanged. But the boy on the bed did look like the man who came to sit cross-legged by the fire. She served him, and he ate her thick stew with his fingers like he was starved to death.

  "Bring some clean rags-and put on a kettle to boil:' Pa said next.

  She did so, and then, without being asked, she went to the medicine chest mounted on a far wall. Truly, no words were needed to see that the boy was sick. His feverish face was the color of dried blood, and she could see small spots, like a hundred bee stings, covering his flesh when Pa removed his buckskin shirt.

  Standing over him, she finally found her voice, but it was as shaky as a windblown leaf. "Boneset tea will break a fever."

  "Aye, Morrow, so it will:"

  "Is he bad sick, Pa?"

  "I'm afraid so:"

  What if he died in their care? She cast a look at the fierce Indian again. Would he hack them to pieces with the tomahawk hanging from his belt? Fear chewed a hole in her stomach, and she thought she might be ill herself.

  Beside her, Pa ran a hand over his sandy beard. "Empty the water bucket and fill it with snow. We've got to pack him in it to bring the fever down. Then we'll try to break it with boneset"

  The wind had driven a foot of snow against the cabin steps, and she scooped some of it up, filling the bucket. She heaved it to the bed, so addled she left the door open. Finished with the stew, the tall Indian shut the door for her, then stood at the foot of the bed watching them, his face like brown granite. Under his scrutiny they worked, packing the boy in new snow, the icy shards shining like broken glass against his dusky skin.

  "Strain the tea and we'll ease it down, Pa told her.

  She worked carefully, efficiently, trying to still her shaking. Using a small spoon, they slowly fed the boy the tea, only to have it come up again. She remembered Aunt Sally, the settlement midwife, saying, "Boneset tea will nearly always break a fever, but makes you ill when taken hot:" In her befuddlement, Morrow had forgotten. She surveyed the mess, about to burst into tears.

  "Let's pray," Pa said when they'd cleaned things up, as if it was the Sabbath and he was finishing a sermon. Only this time he got down on his knees. She darted a glance at the Indian at the foot of the bed. Would he pray too? Did Indians pray?

  She knelt down beside Pa, folding her small, cold hands. Only the Almighty could help them now, and revive the sodden feather tick twice ruined by Indians. She hardly heard what Pa prayed. When he finished, he attempted to talk to the tall man while Morrow stood by the strange boy and watched the snow melt against his feverish skin.

  He looked to be older than she, perhaps the same age as Jess would be now. His hair was almost as long as hers but stickstraight where hers curled a bit. It was the first time in her life she'd seen an Indian up close. Some of the settlement women said the savages had black hearts. She wished he'd open his eyes so she could see if his eyes were black as well.

  "What kind of Indian do you reckon he is?" she whispered when Pa returned to the bed.

  He eyed her thoughtfully. "Shawnee, I think:"

  She looked up at him, mouth agape, fresh fear in her heart.

  "If it were Jess lying there so ill among the Shawnee, I hope someone would care for him, he sa
id.

  She bit her lip. There was no use arguing with Pa, as he always had the right answers straight from Scripture. She said before he could, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you:"

  He smiled. "Well done, Morrow"

  The Shawnee stayed for four days. As she and Pa tended to the boy, the tall Indian would go hunting in deep snow, bringing in all manner of meat. Rabbit, deer, even buffalo.

  When the boy's spots receded and Morrow's began, the Indians finally went away. She lay on the filthy feather tick and wanted to die, but Pa and the Almighty kept her alive.

  "You're meant to live, Morrow," Pa told her, rocking her by the fire. "Just like the Shawnee we helped save, God has a plan for your life:"

  Morrow shot upright like a loosened spring, the thin sheet beneath her damp with sweat. The creak of the keelboat and the scuttling of a mouse were a welcome reprieve from her nightmare. In one dim corner a single grease lamp smoked, reminding her she was afloat and almost eighteen, not desperately ill and only ten. Pa wasn't here holding her, telling her everything would be all right, and she wasn't covered with spots, just sweat.

  Through the makeshift curtain that gave her some semblance of privacy, she could make out Captain Click's sturdy shadow like a locked gate barring harm's way. They were camped for the night on the safer south shore of the river while the polemen slept or stood watch. Groggily she ticked off how many days of travel they'd made. Seven. And seven or so to go. She lay down again, wide-awake, knowing dawn was near. Reaching out, she fumbled with the drawstrings of her brocade purse, searching for a vial of rose cologne. Taking a bracing breath, she tried to summon good sense.

  She was a woman now. A woman who simply must master her emotions before setting foot on Kentucke soil again. Yet her feelings were as fresh as the day she'd stood in the river and listened to her life being torn asunder. In her heart she was still five years old, watching her brother's retreating back as he told her to stay still, returning to the cabin empty of her mother's comforting presence, watching Pa erect a fence around two fresh graves. Nothing seemed able to cut the painful tether that bound her to the past, and the river was hurtling her forward, making her face it once again. Ready or not.

  Not one Shawnee did they see, at least outside of her dreams. The late June sun was making heat shimmers all around, and the land was giving off the rich, ripe scent that she loved. When the keelboat rounded a sharp bend in the river, Morrow spied a man waiting in the shade of a sycamore at the mouth of Limestone Creek. Pa? How had he known the very day she'd be back?

  At her elbow Captain Click said quietly, "I'll wager he's been here every day the past week waiting:"

  She didn't doubt it. Two years. What had time wrought? For all she knew, she could be coming home to a stepmother and a new brother or sister. Though they'd written, their letters to each other had been few and far between with the war on. She'd changed so much from the girl of sixteen he'd sent East. Had he changed too?

  Captain Click came to stand near the gangplank, feet firmly planted between the cleats affixed to the deck. She could smell the cargo in the sweltering heat-ginseng and maple sugar, gunpowder and whiskey-in myriad kegs and barrels just behind them. It took all her nerve not to wrinkle her nose. She'd worn a more sensible dress today, gladly shedding her foolish Philadelphia finery, afraid her father wouldn't be able to tell who she was. But she'd kept on her gloves and straw hat, lowering the lace veil a little to hide her brimming emotions.

  "Daughter, is that you?"

  The voice calling from shore was warm and beloved yet strangely unfamiliar. Hearing it after so long made her burst into tears, right before Ezekial Click and the sunburned boatmen. She hardly heard the slap of the gangplank as it came down or felt the hard hand that helped her onto shore, sending her straight into her father's open arms. They enveloped her with all the warmth and strength she remembered, mingled with sweat and the tobacco he so loved to smoke.

  She looked up at him, trying to smile. "'Tis me, Pa, she said through her tears. But its not you. The man before her seemed a shadow of his former self. Leaner. More lined. Even his green eyes seemed faded to gray.

  Captain Click thrust a hand forward to grasp her father's, cutting the emotion of the moment as he did so. "You've a fine daughter, Elias Little"

  "I have you to thank for seeing her home, he answered with difficulty, his face grave beneath his sandy beard. "I trust you saw your own daughter safely to Virginia"

  "Aye, Briar Hill;' he answered, looking almost grieved. "And I wager I'll be as glad to get her back again."

  With that, Captain Click turned and gave a sign for the polemen to bring her trunk ashore and heave it into the waiting wagon before continuing downstream where the river was the most dangerous. They'd travel another two hundred miles, he said, before delivering supplies to the settlements. Morrow felt her father's arm drape around her shoulders, snug as a shawl, and he waved with his free hand until they were out of sight. It was only then that he turned to her, amazement in every line and shadow of his aging face.

  "I think Aunt Etta has sent someone in your place, he finally said, lifting her veil to better study her. There was stark wonder in his eyes, as if he was seeing someone else entirely.

  At his scrutiny she almost squirmed, eyes flooding again. "Two years is too long, Pa. We can thank the Redcoats for that, I suppose"

  "We can thank the good Lord for bringing you back, he said, his smile surfacing. "Come along now. I've got to get you home before nightfall:"

  He helped her up into the wagon, and she nearly gasped at the sight of the gun leaning against the seat. Since when did he carry a gun? He was a preacher-a man of peace ...

  "There's been some trouble of late," he said, hopping up beside her and tucking the rifle out of sight.

  Despite his sobering words, her soul seemed to reel with relief and wonder. Home! Her eyes fastened on the surrounding woods, lush and green, and the rutted ribbon of road that divided dense thickets of oak and elm and maple. A hot wind skimmed over them, spreading the heady scent of honeysuckle. She breathed deeply, shutting her eyes, so thankful she felt she would burst.

  "Oh Pa, 'tis just as I remember," she said, turning to take a last look at the river. "I was afraid-being gone so long-that everything would be different somehow:"

  He smiled. "Your room's just like you left it. And I've planted a few more fruit trees. Some fine apples-goldens and Normandys and russets-outside your window"

  She sighed with pleasure. She'd nearly forgotten the winsome view from her upstairs room and the way it took in the sunset as it lay like a golden benediction at dusk. In Philadelphia she'd looked out on brick buildings that blocked all God's green earth and left her to wonder if there was any.

  "Aunt Etta was wonderful, Pa. But I'm so glad to be home:' Even as she said the words, her conscience nipped at her.

  Glad to be home, yes, but still afraid.

  He nodded a bit absently, his attention fixed on the team that pulled them over the rutted road, darting occasional glances at the woods. There was an unusual wariness about him, a carefulness she'd not seen before, and it shook her to her calamanco slippers.

  Taking a deep breath, she began to chatter as she'd not done for days. "I'd nearly given up coming home, truth be told. The British seemed to enjoy the city so much they showed little heart for war. At least General Howe. Sir Billy, they call him. He much preferred the dancing and the races. I was invited to a few of the festivities but declined to go:"

  "Your aunt wrote that you caught the eye of more than one British officer. I was afraid, from all she told me, you'd not return to me, or return a bride"

  An officer's wife? Surely not. Not a Redcoat's bride.

  Turning her head slightly, she studied his profile as she bounced about on the seat. Her absence had gone hard on him. He was a bit grayer at the temples, his once smooth face as lined as the cracked e
arth beneath the wagon wheels. "My heart is here with you, Pa, on the Red River. Not Philadelphia"

  "Perhaps it was wrong of me to send you there, but I wanted-" He began to cough, his ruddy color changing to a wan hue. "I wanted you to have some peace. Forget"

  Forget? But I'll never forget.

  She swallowed down the words before she said them, remembering Ma's and Euphemia's lonesome graves. Lifting a gloved hand, she swiped at a tear as it left the corner of her eye. Dare she ask him the question that had dogged her all the way downriver? It took another half mile before she summoned the courage. "Pa ... have the Shawnee come back? The Indian and his son, I mean?"

  He nodded, face grim. "They come, as sure as the seasons. But I don't blame them. We're squatting on the sacred hunting grounds God gave them"

  She paused, thinking of the settlers pouring into the Kentucke territory overland or coming downriver. It was all the men had talked about on the keelboat. "Seems like we could all just abide together in peace. Isn't there land enough for the both of us?"

  "The Almighty only made so much land, Morrow, and the white man wants it all, so Captain Click says. The Shawnee know that and fight to keep the settlers out" He tugged his hat lower to shade his eyes. "I don't know why the Shawnee keep coming to our cabin. They just come, smoking or eating with me, sometimes saying a few words"

  Startled, she lifted her veil. "But they don't speak English. And you don't speak Shawnee"

  He cast a triumphant look her way. "I can communicate a bit:"

  Stunned, she nearly fell off the wagon seat with the next lurch. "How?"