CHAPTER SIX

THEY RODE NORTH all the next day.

Toward noon it began to rain, a cold rain, falling in sheets. The thick gray sky dropped down heavily over the woods where many of the trees were shedding their leaves, not in the colors of the Greenbrier Settlement but in dull browns and grays.

The rain soaked the saddle in front of Margaret where the baby had ridden and began to seep through her breeches. She shivered. Agatha, riding behind her, gasped, then sobbed. “I’m so cold!”

“Hush, Sister.” Margaret glanced back. Agatha’s fair face was pinched and pale under the lid of her bonnet. “Drink a little more of your water,” Margaret told her.

“Gone!” Agatha wailed. She gestured avidly toward Margaret’s canteen. “Better to give than to receive!”

Margaret passed her canteen and Agatha drank greedily. When she handed the canteen back, there were only a few drops left. But they were in well-watered country now and Margaret knew she would be able to fill her canteen whenever Topknot decided to stop. When that would happen was not clear.

Again, the two women were dropping behind. Uncle, who had moved in front of them earlier was disappearing among the trees ahead. The brothers, who had been riding behind them, had darted off in the woods, probably to track a deer.

Wildly, Margaret thought of turning and fleeing. But Star would never outrun the Indians’ horses and she could not leave Agatha behind.

A whoop up ahead and Uncle came galloping back, his face clenched in a scowl. He slashed Agatha’s horse with his whip. Star lurched forward, colliding with Jenny, who broke into a canter. Jolting, sliding, the two women rode ahead, while Uncle, behind them, went on lashing their horses. A branch struck Margaret in the face as she heard Agatha scream, “I’m falling!”

But she did not fall, and by the time they reached the rest of the party, she had stopped crying. Her lips were moving, Margaret supposed in prayer. She drew up beside her: “Speak, Sister.”

Uncle was still herding them along, but Agatha managed to quote, “He therefore who went before (Vain-Confidence by name), not seeing the way before him fell into a deep pit.”

Margaret found herself smiling, the smile cracking her stiff lips. “They are not likely to let either of us go before,” she said. As Agatha began again to sniffle, she added, “Courage, Sister!” then wondered how often she would say it before the words ran dry. A maple dropped a brown leaf on her arm. Looking down, she saw that her shirtwaist had finally dried to stiffness. A sob seized her by the throat but she thrust it down.

In the afternoon, they passed out of the woods onto a rolling, grassy plain, where Margaret almost expected to see cattle grazing. She remembered a phrase Daniel Boone had recited when he stopped at their cabin door: “Kentucky, Land of Milk and Honey.”

But they were too far north and west to be in that country, and after the bloody sevens, those years that had sent so many settlers fleeing back from the violence, she wondered how many still longed for that promised land. And now here she was, a husband-less, childless woman alone with savages, in charge willy-nilly of her sister.

They crossed a creek clattering over stones. Margaret guessed from the angle of the sun that it was near four o’clock. Shortly, Topknot called a halt. She knew from the earlier hour and the big fire the brothers built that they no longer feared pursuit. They had come too far, and the big river lay between. She pressed down a pang of panic.

Dismounting, she helped Agatha slide down from her horse. Immediately Agatha broke free and ran to the creek. Lying on her belly, she lapped the water like a dog.

The Indians dismounted and began to fill their canteens. The horses gathered at the edge of the water, sucking it up.

Raven Wing finished filling his canteen and came up the bank to where Margaret was standing. He was tall, dark-complected, with a large head and a single eagle feather stuck in his topknot.

He held out his right hand.

Astonished, Margaret reached to meet his hand.

He struck her to the ground.

Time passed before Margaret regained consciousness, time enough for the two brothers to return with a pair of rabbits. Half dazed by the blow, Margaret stood up. The ways of these savages would always be unpredictable. Her people’s gesture of friendship, the extended right hand, had some other meaning, indecipherable here. Anger or resentment were useless. She began to accept that she did not understand and perhaps would never understand. Ignorance put her and Agatha at greater risk. She decided to watch the Shawnee more closely and to learn.

Now she watched Brother One skin and gut the rabbits, noting his quickness with his knife. He split the carcasses into four dripping pieces, then suspended them on forked sticks over the fire. Rain dripped into the fire, threatening to put it out, but it flared up again as the rabbit juices hit.

Margaret slid down the bank to fill her canteen. Coming back up, she smelled the rich savor of roasting rabbit and knew she would have to eat. What a miserable sight they all looked, their clothes dark with rain as they crouched over the fire.

When the meat was only half done, Uncle tossed her part of a leg. She chewed the stringy ligaments off and set her teeth into a pocket of thigh flesh, succulent, nearly raw. Gagging, she choked it down, her hunger more powerful than her disgust. Agatha, crouched in the dirt, was tearing meat off a leg with her teeth. A good sign, Margaret thought. There was no use for dainty ways here.

“I thought you’d surely fall and break a bone when Raven Wing whipped Star,” she said between bites.

“Never!” Agatha said disdainfully. “Raven Wing? What kind of a name?”

“I thought it best to give them all names.”

Agatha huffed. “You have allowed your imagination to run away with you,” she said crossly. “I think it would be to your benefit to leave them as they are, nameless savages with whom we must always contend!” At her tone, Margaret felt a great relief. She no longer needed to repeat, “Courage!” The lesson was learned before the words dried up.

She said soothingly, “Thank you for your correction. I see now why you are such a good wife to Alan. He also at times lets his imagination off the leash.” She was remembering his owl hoots and wolf howls that had brought trouble down upon them.

“Alan is dead.” Agatha tore off another piece of meat. “I saw him laid out on the trail with the scalping knife doing its unholy work.”

In the three days since the attack, Margaret thought, Agatha had absorbed the sight, chewing, swallowing, and digesting it like a tough bit of meat.

Margaret said, “At least the knife did not do its work on John—”

Agatha interrupted, “My man stayed to fight. They tomahawked him and took his scalp. It will go to Detroit, to the scalp buyer. It will fetch a good price. He had—” her voice faltered—”beautiful fair hair. But your John,” she added silkily, “ran away.”

Margaret flared. “He was shot in the side, bleeding—I saw him—running as best he could to give the alarm!”

“Do you think he died on the way?” Agatha asked solicitously.

“No! He was determined to make it to the fort”—but even as she said it, she knew it could not be so; John was already stumbling as she watched him. She remembered how the Indians had stared at him, amazed that he had even been able to get up off the ground.

“Then praise God!” Agatha said, raising her face to the rain.

Margaret said nothing. Hope was too precious to waste on words.

Finally, the rain stopped. At a slight rise of ground, they made ready for the night. It passed slowly for Margaret in a half sleep of pain. She had struck a rock with her shoulder when Raven Wing felled her and the ache took over her mind and darkened her seeing.

When the Indians roused in the gray dawn, Margaret saw Agatha’s face as she sat up; she looked parched, pale, and drawn. The rabbit, Margaret guessed, had gone down badly. Agatha, with a pitiful gesture, pointed to her skirt, and Margaret saw it was heavily stained and smelled the stench.

“You should have gone to the woods!”

“That old Indian (it was Uncle she meant) never lets us rise at night, you know that—and I have no boots.”

Margaret rose quickly and went to Topknot, who was packing his saddlebags. She had noticed the day before that he seemed to understand a few words of English. He had looked sharply at the two women when they were disputing about John’s escape.

“Ill,” Margaret announced, pointing at Agatha. “Water!”

Topknot seemed to grasp the situation. He pointed toward the creek and said a word Margaret understood as go. She repeated the crude sound until she had learned it. Someday that go might mean freedom.

She helped Agatha down to the creek. Partly shielded by the trees, she stripped off her skirt and petticoat, all heavily stained and stinking, and plunged them in the cold water. She watched the current carry the defilement away.

Shivering on the bank, Agatha was trying to cover herself with her hands.

“Nobody is looking at you,” Margaret said. The Indians were busy breaking camp. It seemed an aspect of the Shawnees’ modesty that they took no interest in naked white women.

Margaret wrung out the garments and knotted them into a bundle. Agatha would catch her death if she wore them wet, and there was no chance the Indians would allow time to dry the things in the sun.

Leaving her sister huddled by the creek, Margaret went back to camp. In the bustle of leaving, she managed to snatch a blanket. As she turned with it back to the creek, she felt Topknot’s eyes, but he did not stop her.

At the creek, Agatha was cleaning herself with handfuls of wet leaves, then using more leaves to dry. Margaret noticed with dismay how childlike her naked body appeared, white, fleshless, the underlying bones rising through the parchment skin. Agatha had never been well-fleshed, but four days with only a bit of jerky and rejected wild rabbit had reduced her even further.

She wrapped the blanket around Agatha’s shoulders and knotted it securely.

“But how will I mount?” the girl cried.

“As best you can,” Margaret said stoutly. She would not waste her pity on such trifles. Still, when Agatha went to climb on Star, Margaret stood behind her, shielding her, then, once she was mounted, helped her spread the blanket over her knees. She undid the bundle of wet clothes and spread them on Star’s rump, where they would dry in time.

Then they were off, following the one word—Go!—from Topknot.