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ELIZABETH STARED AT the flattened ground at the base of the tree.
Except for Thomas’ memory, there was nothing to indicate the spot of ground was any more special than the next.
It certainly did not bespeak of a last resting place.
Elizabeth’s heart squeezed with the agony. “Why did you not say something when we first passed?”
“We were being kept from each other at the time. And then I bargained to stay with Red Bear so I could run the gauntlet in your place.”
“You should not have done so.”
“I would have done the same a thousand times over.” He lifted her hand. He pressed dry, chapped lips to her knuckles. “And now, let us go from here.”
“You do not wish to pray?” she asked. “Or sit a bit?”
“Nae. We canna risk it. Besides, I can no longer help them. But ye are my life, and I will get us home.”
For the next three days, Elizabeth recognized every mind-numbing mile. The ruins of Gist’s Plantation and Fort Necessity. Chestnut Ridge. Great Meadows and the Youghiogheny River.
This morning, a week shy of leaving Iron Gun’s Village, they awoke under a small outcropping of rock at the western base of Big Savage Mountain. Fort Cumberland lay on the other side.
“Oh, Thomas,” she swore, the jar of salve balanced in her palm. “I cannot see this cut through your beard, but what I do see worries me. The feet look worse.” She stared into the jar’s dark depths. “This will be gone by tomorrow.” She lifted her hand to his forehead. “And you feel warm.”
Thomas pushed her hand away. “We will reach Fort Cumberland today or tomorrow. We can get what we need there. They may even have a doctor.”
She set the jar to the side, eased into his lap, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “And we can sleep?”
He nodded.
“And bathe?”
He chuckled. “Dinna get your hopes up. ‘Tis full of men the fort is.”
She wrinkled her nose. “And men care not about such things?”
“They do.” He winked. “Especially where womenfolk are concerned. But ye will likely be the only woman there, and men can tolerate uncleanness for long periods of time.”
The man’s lips found hers for a quick kiss. He set her away from him. He rolled to his knees and lifted to his feet.
He grimaced.
The fear crawled into her. “Why do we not rest here this day? We have enough food. Perhaps we could catch fish in the creek.”
“We canna risk a fire.”
“Well, there are berries somewhere nearby surely. Or roots of some kind.”
“Once I start moving, I will be fine.”
Elizabeth was not so sure.
Big Savage Mountain earned its name that day. The terrain ground against Elizabeth’s knees and hips. The rocky soil bit into her feet. A fierce wind, scraping a fury over the mountain, tore at her skin.
Thomas fared worse. He fought to stay aright. He battled his way through the pain, his hand gripped tight on a large stick that he used to pole the ground. Even without a cloak, he looked little changed from the man she followed to the cemetery at Fearnought Farms the day they first met.
Only now she loved him desperately.
Once off the mountain, they found the trail to Fort Cumberland easily enough. Even then, Elizabeth’s feet lagged. Her head ached, and her bones felt like mush. When she slowed, Thomas would grab her hand. He would stab his stick into the ground and pull her along with him.
“If we keep a steady pace, we can reach the fort by tonight.”
She had no idea where he found the strength.
Late that afternoon, while on a descending path toward Fort Cumberland, he wrenched to a halt.
Elizabeth stumbled into him.
He pressed his fingers to her mouth. He lifted his gaze right and
to the ridge above them, then left to a falling away of the land. He pulled the tomahawk from his belt.
Her spine coiled tight.
He nodded at the road. She followed his gaze.
Five dead soldiers, their redcoats gleaming liked robin redbreasts in the dappled light of the thick cover of trees, lay in their path.
“Can we not take another way?” she whispered.
“Nae. The fort is on a peninsula. This is the only way to it.”
And with that, her hope was gone.
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BLOOD OOZED AND PUDDLED beneath the dead and scalped bodies. Even from here, Thomas could hear the flies.
Ach! Despite the incomplete safety of the fort, he had pinned much on a stay within its walls. Rest. Food.
News.
His stomach churned. All those months he warred and killed with nary a twinge of regret. Now, even as he tried to free himself from death, it followed him without mercy. Would he be forced to kill again to save them both? Did he have the strength to do so?
A horse whinnied atop the ridge to his right. Hooves broke the sod and barreled toward them. The war cry beat against the trees.
Blue Hoof.
Thomas yanked the knife from his belt. He thrust it into Elizabeth’s hand. “Run!” He pushed her down the rise. “Use the knife if you have to!”
Thomas turned. He firmed up his grip on the tomahawk. Blue Hoof lifted his own and swung his arm in an arc. Thomas ducked. The tomahawk sliced the air above his head.
Blue Hoof thundered to the right and onto the trail. He spurred the horse around. Another war cry split from his lungs. He lifted the tomahawk above his head and charged again. Thomas lifted his arm and blocked the swing. Both tomahawks crashed to the ground. The horse sped past. Blue Hoof pulled out a knife.
I have to get him off the beast.
The horse turned and came a third time. Thomas clenched his fists. He crouched.
The horse was abreast of him. Blue Hoof swung the knife. Thomas ducked and seized the brave’s foot. Blue Hoof’s body slid from the saddle. His back slammed into Thomas’ chest.
Both men crashed to the ground. Fire jolted down Thomas’ spine and into his legs. Blue Hoof scrambled atop him. He lifted his knife upward. Thomas gripped the man’s wrist. The knife blade quivered.
Then, the brave’s head jerked sideways. His body went slack. Thomas swung the arm to the side. The knife sliced into the sod.
The Indian’s head jolted again. A cry strangled from his throat. His eyes closed.
The brave’s full weight collapsed onto Thomas. His lungs flattened. His limbs shook.
Above him, Elizabeth stood. Blood and skin matter dripped from a large rock gripped in her hands.
Thomas shoved the brave off of him. He rolled to his knees. He felt the brave’s neck. A pulse throbbed against his fingers.
Elizabeth fell to her knees to the brave’s other side. She tossed the rock away. “Is he dead?”
“Nae.”
“I wanted him to be so.” Her face glazed with shock.
Thomas reached across the body and grabbed her arm. “But he is not, so ye have nae regrets.”
“But he will come after us soon enough.”
Aye, he would. He would never give up.
Elizabeth’s gaze rove over the brave from head to toe. Quick as a frightened sparrow, she reached for the brave’s belt at his waist. She tugged it free.
“What do ye do?” he asked.
She pulled the shirt up toward his neck. “He cannot follow us if he has no clothes.”
Within minutes, they had stripped the brave bare of everything but his loincloth. Elizabeth had pleaded for Thomas to take that as well.
“I will wait over there while you do so.”
He had refused. “’Tis nae need, Lass. His humiliation will be keen enough, and he canna come after us as he is.”
They stuffed the clothes, the tomahawk, and the knife into the bag on the horse. With a rope from the saddle, Thomas tied Blue Hoof to a nearby tree. ‘Twas not knotted enough to keep him forever, but it would slow him down.
Blue Hoof groaned. His lids fluttered.
Thomas sighed. He doubled his fist and leveled it at the brave’s jaw. He slacked forward and quieted.
Thomas mounted the gray mare. He reached down and pulled Elizabeth up to the saddle behind him. They scrambled for the road. He turned his back on Fort Cumberland.
“Hang on, Lass. We will be riding hard and fast. And pray.” He tossed the words over his shoulder. “Pray like you never have before.”
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THOMAS DROVE THE BEAST hard. The rosary, gripped tightly in Elizabeth’s fingers, swung wildly with the horse’s pounding.
She prayed as much for their safety as for the hatred that had coursed through her heart at Blue Hoof.
That evening, Thomas found a deep cut in a bank along a stream at the base of Sideling Hill. A further search of a second bag on the horse revealed a flask of rum, but no medicinals and only pemmican to eat. They gladly partook of it, along with blackberries they found not far from the creek. Thomas soaked his feet at the water’s edge.
Elizabeth spread the blankets next to the bank. That night, she curled her back against Thomas’ chest as she had every night since leaving Iron Gun’s Village. Cuts on her face, arms, and hands stung. Bruises ached. She felt like a battered pincushion.
“You had the knife, Elizabeth.” The words burned her ear. “Why did ye nae use it?”
“Do you wish that I had?”
“Nae, Lass. I have nae stomach for killing if another way presents itself.”
“But if someone found Blue Hoof and offered him clothes, he could be on his way now.”
He shrugged. “’Tis possible. But it is more likely he will be humiliated and ridiculed for having his clothes taken. And dinna forget we also have his weapons and his horse. Nae Indian is likely to offer help to another who was so foolish.”
“Oh, Tomas.” Her heart convulsed with the guilt. “It matters not whether I used the rock or the knife because when he rolled on top of you my heart swelled with the hate.” The words ground from her throat. “All I wanted to do was plunge that knife into his back over and over and over again.”
She had never felt anything so powerful nor frightening.
Thomas squeezed her tight against him. “What stopped ye?”
“I realized my hate was not just for Blue Hoof, but against this war that has brought me here. Against the English and the French. Against this God-forsaken wilderness that takes a whole person and beats and shatters them till they are a shred of their former self. And then, I saw the rock just lying there. I knew I could get him off of you with it.” She sighed. “To kill him would have been a sin I might never have washed free of. But it took all I had to subdue my will at that point, and I very much did not wish to.”
She twisted to her back. She reached for his face. The beard scratched her fingers. “If we do not get home soon, I am not even certain I can find enough of myself to fashion a new Elizabeth from the old. But I will not now lose you, too. No matter what I have to do.”
The next day, after crossing Sideling Hill, the ground leveled. They crossed Conocheague Creek at noon and Hagerstown not long thereafter. Signs of the struggle for the frontier met them at every turn. Cabins were deserted and burned. Fields lay fallow and weeds scourged the land with abandon. Skeletons, along the trail and by homes, bleached in the wicked heat of a summer sun. ‘Twas as if the land had been stripped and laid bare by the war.
She and Thomas had fared no better.
That night they camped west of Kittochiny Mountain. Thomas seemed to move better on his feet owing to riding the horse for two days. He plucked cattails from the creek’s edge. They washed the mud from the roots and ate them raw. With the last of the blackberries and a bite or two of pemmican, Elizabeth’s stomach was at least satisfied for the moment.
She awoke to the man’s warmth, but he refused to listen to her fears that he was fevering. The gash on his cheek looked ghastly. She poured the rum on his jaw. He hissed but otherwise said nothing.
And then, from the first step the man took on the hard, scrabbly mountain ground because they could not ride the horse, his face stiffened and he quieted.
Hour after hour they picked their way around and between monstrous gray rocks. They stumbled over smaller ones. Even the few grassy areas were deceiving, for the hard stones rolled against their feet and jarred their bones. Elizabeth’s hand would shoot forward to grab a hold of Thomas. He would push her away and grab her elbow or her arm. He would reach for the small of her back.
And always, he walked behind her.
That afternoon, between noon and dusk, they passed the lofted rock she and Thomas had slept atop the first night of their capture. They descended the mountain’s eastern slope. Thomas shuttled his way through an ankle-deep lagoon fed by a waterfall twice her height. He pressed her to the right and toward a cave.
She turned.
Cher Dieu! Non!
Blood trailed his feet. Unlike before, this time ‘twas thick and mean.
The panic welled inside her.
He stumbled.
She grabbed his arm. The heat blasted into her hands. “You are on fire.”
He lowered to the ground just inside the cave. He pinned his elbows to tented knees. He tossed his head into his hands.
“Why did you not say something?” she cried.
“I am sorry, Elizabeth. God help me, I tried my best to get us both home. If we had been able to stop at Fort Cumberland, then maybe.” A gasp wrenched his chest. “I have failed ye, just as I did Catharine and Dougald.”
She threw herself to her knees before him. She grabbed his face.
“You have not failed me, just as you did not fail them. We are here. We are almost home. Tomorrow we can ride the horse again.”
“But I canna go further, Lass.”
His thin voice raked her chest wall.
“Oui, you can. We are going to rest tonight. I will get your fever down. In the morning you will feel well enough to ride.”
She spread the blankets inside the cave. Thomas lay on them. He moved not, but his eyes watched her.
From Blue Hoof’s bag, she pulled out an extra shirt. She doused it in the cold water of the pool before the cave. She helped Thomas change from his dry shirt to the wet one. The now dry shirt she saturated with water and wound around his head. She wet one of the blankets and lay it across his torso.
She reached into the bag and pulled out a pair of deerskin leggings. She slipped them on and then shed the skirt she had been dressed in for her wedding to Iron Gun. With Thomas’ knife, she shortened the end of the leggings and then shoved the ragged ends into her beaded moccasins. She found a rope and tied the leggings to her waist. Her skirt she tore into strips. She washed Thomas’ feet and his jaw. She poured the last of the rum on both. She wrapped the feet with the strips from her skirt. She unsaddled the horse and tethered him in grasses protected by the waterfall, the mountain, and the side of the cave. She built a small fire to chase away unwanted animals and to provide a small measure of light.
For the next several hours and deep into the night, she pitched a battle against the unrelenting fever. At times, Thomas was coherent enough to talk with her. At others, she could not waken him to do more than change the heated shirts to colder ones. Twice she made him sit in the lagoon to cool.
None of it worked. The man’s body continued to heat. The feet fired redder and angrier.
Should she light the fire higher and scour the area for something that might swallow his fever? And what would she look for? Could she hope to find yarrow or white willow bark? Would it even be enough?
Or would he die in her arms when they were so close to home?
The fire sputtered. The shadows deepened.
Her heart tensed against the fear, but she had only one choice.
And this time, she would not let the shadow people stop her.
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ELIZABETH PRESSED HER fingers to the man’s bearded jaw.
“I am going for help.”
Thomas grabbed her hand.
“’Tis nearly thirty miles, Lass,” he gasped. “And ‘tis dark. Ye will face it alone.”
“I told you, some things are more fearsome than the dark.”
“Ye could get lost.”
“I will go slow. I will make myself a torch as I have seen you do. I will stick to the trail.”
“Please, Lass. Wait till morning. I will feel better after a rest.”
Would he? Could she take that chance?
No. He would be no more ready to ride a horse with her tomorrow than he was now. She was not strong enough to hold him on nor get him off for rests along the way.
For the next several hours, he could at least drink. He could drag himself to the pool to cool down. But a time would come shortly when he could not do that either.
“This is the only choice we have.” Her throat closed tight. “You will worsen soon enough for I have nothing to help with the fever or the sickness that spreads through your feet and jaw.”
She pressed trembling lips against his.
He could offer her nothing back.
She peeled the top of a branch downward. Another she stripped of bark. She mangled the bark into the first branch and set the torch aside.
She filled a flask with water. She placed a few more logs near the fire within easy reach.
“You must drink. You must change your shirt to a colder one when the fever comes. Crawl to the pool if need be.” She pulled the rosary from her pocket and pressed the beads into his fingers.
He smiled. “We really need to get another so we do not have to share this one.”
“You can buy me my own once we get home.”
“’Tis a promise I will keep, Lass.”
“And Tomas?”
“Aye.”
“Pray. Pray like you never have before.”
Fifteen minutes later, she lowered the torch to the fire. It blazed into life. She climbed to a nearby rock. She was glad she had changed into the leggings, for ‘twould make riding much easier. She eased onto the horse’s back. She pulled the reins to the right and guided the horse down the rise. She turned left and found the trail.
The torch lit a thin thread before her, pulling and sucking her into the deepest parts of the dark. Mile after mile, with agonizing slowness, the Endless Mountains fell away behind her, Thomas within them.
She was alone.
Her stomach knotted and heaved with every step of the horse. Golden orbs eyed her along the path. She wound around and over hills. Crickets screeched in the night air. The mournful aloneness of an owl and the whooshing of wings scraped against her ears.
You saved not the others. You cannot save Thomas.
But still, she pressed forward inch by inch.
And then, she heard wolves, and the last of her bravery unraveled. She signed herself with a cross. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
One imaginary bead after another slipped through her fingers. She called on every holy Saint she could remember from her catechism to aid her.
Finally, golden fingers crawled along the trail ahead. A few minutes more and they dashed between the trees. They widened and lifted. Wood dust and morning bugs flittered in the shimmering.
The shadows sank behind the trees.
“I have done it,” she whispered into the morning wood. “I have battled the dark and won.”
But Thomas still waited and time was running out.
She pushed the mare to ride harder. She lost track of time. The sun warmed the wood around her.
Up ahead, a dog barked. She slowed the horse.
Surely not! Was she that close to home?
The beast shot toward her.
Fingal.
The horse whinnied and stamped. She pawed at the dirt.
“Easy.” Elizabeth’s gut collided with her throat. “’Tis an old friend.”
Two riders rounded the bend ahead. One called to Fingal.
A shriek strangled from the horse’s throat. Power surged into her flanks. She reared upward and kicked her front legs.
Elizabeth’s heart catapulted from her chest. She was thrust upward from the saddle. She grabbed for something to hold, but her fingers found only air.
The horse shot forward. The scream lodged in Elizabeth’s throat. Her back slammed into the ground. Her lungs shattered. Sparkles sucked the blessed morning light from her eyes.
The darkness screeched toward her.
The light was no more.