20
We had hoped that the white men would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains. Now that hope is gone.
—CHIEF DRAGGING CANOE, CHICKAMAUGA TSALAGI (CHEROKEE)
Cornelius was lost in the cane.
“Suppose we let him stay thataway,” Nate said.
As Sion chuckled, Nate shifted in the saddle and spat a stream of tobacco juice in the direction Cornelius had taken. Ten feet high in places and thick as turkey feathers, the reedy stalks seemed without end. Somewhere beyond the mess of rustling green lay the Barrens, that treeless sweep of grasses stretching as far as the eye could see.
Tempe’s mare began foraging, mouth so full of cane Tempe feared she might choke.
On his mount beside her, Raven waved a hand to the north. “Keep to the tulip trees along the water. I will find the dila.”
Both Sion and Nate looked from Raven to Tempe as if wanting her to translate. She lifted her shoulders. “Cherokee for skunk, likely.” Or fool.
Sion cracked another smile as Nate dissolved in silent laughter. Raven frowned. He thought as little of Cornelius as Sion, though Sion had earned Raven’s grudging respect, at least. Tempe could see it. Feel it. But Raven seemed especially contemptuous of Cornelius, who had charged into the cane in pursuit of a rare ivory-billed woodpecker.
Without waiting for any agreement, Raven plunged into the reeds atop his pony, a bone whistle in his mouth. In minutes, Tempe could hear the throaty trill of it, their main hope of locating the wayward mapmaker.
Lord forgive her, but she wished he’d stay gone. Last night when it was her turn to stand watch and relieve him, he’d come entirely too close. With Sion asleep and no one to intervene, Cornelius had slipped a possessive arm about her before she could shake him loose. Revulsion turned her sick inside. Had he no decency? Would he see his sister, Harper, so manhandled?
Aware of Sion beside her, she squinted beneath the brim of her hat and wished for a little shade. Cold water. Light-headed, she followed him as he turned his stallion in the direction Raven had gestured.
In a few miles they were well beyond the cane on the cusp of the long-anticipated, luxurious grassland. Her grateful eyes took in flame-colored berries and flowers, their names unknown to her, alongside beloved violets and trilliums. In their season, wild strawberries grew in such abundance they stained the horses’ hooves a deep red.
“The beginning of the Barrens,” she said. “So called because the Indians set fire to the land each spring.”
Nate angled his hat lower. “Why exactly?”
“To better chase the game. Buffalo, mostly.”
The buffalo meat they’d jerked two nights before was heavy in their packs, the memory of roasted marrow bones sweet. She uncapped her canteen and took a swig of lukewarm water.
“How far to cross?” Sion was studying her, awaiting her answer.
What had Pa said? “The Barrens are some sixty miles long and nearly as broad. The moon is full. We’d best travel by night lest we be easy prey.”
“It’ll be a tiresome meadow, day or night,” Nate predicted, looking over his shoulder at the lagging chain carriers.
“North of here is the Green River,” she told them. “Northwest are the caves.” Cold. Strange. Unforgettable.
“I’ll lead out at full dark,” Sion said. “Best keep fifty paces between each man.”
Nate was already looking weary. “How far you reckon we’ll get in a night?”
“All the way through, mayhap, if a full moon.” Tempe wanted to flinch, but Sion was suffused with a palpable enthusiasm. “We’ll keep to an agreed-upon rendezvous point in case of attack or separation.” His gaze swung to a ridge, another danger. Tempe pushed down any thought of ambush.
Nate followed close behind them as they moved toward the tulip trees. “I misdoubt we’ll be long in findin’ Corny. Not with his powder horn clinkin’ on the hilt of his knife for all to hear.”
Truly, it was a wonderment they’d not been ambushed yet. Cornelius made an infernal noise wherever he went, be it with his mouth or his gear. Someone was always trying to shush him. She’d rid the camp of his scarlet handkerchief a ways back by stuffing it in the hollow of a tree, bemused when he hunted high and low for it like a sulky child.
Lucian was more the man. She’d taken a liking to Lucian, who was an able hand with any task put to him, his mood ever amiable, his patience with his irascible master biblical.
For now they sought the refuge of the shade, Lucian and Sion standing watch whilst she slipped off her moccasins and waded in the creek. One hour passed, then two. Occasionally she heard Raven’s whistle. She imagined Cornelius in that maze of cane, bewildered and sweating, going in dizzying circles. She’d heard tell of men wearing themselves out and never being found. If anyone could ferret out the Englishman, it would be Raven.
By dusk her confidence began to wane. Full dark brought an end to the fleeting whistling. She studied the wall of cane, sorry she’d hidden the red handkerchief. A little color might help Raven’s search. Weariness and worry tugged at her. While she stewed, the chain carriers bedded down in the brush, Nate and Lucian with them.
It was just her and Sion standing watch at opposite ends of camp, she keenly aware of his silhouette. She gnawed on a strip of jerky, craving bread . . . honey. She’d had no honey since leaving Virginia. Bees from the colonies were hard to come by. White man’s flies, Raven called them.
She felt like a wild creature herself in her worn garments. What man would think her worth pondering even cleaned up? Again that sweet craving for a pretty petticoat or ribbon took root. Bloomed. And then the memory of Cornelius’s unwanted attentions at their change of watch returned, banished only by Sion’s reassuring presence some hundred yards distant. Their last private talk was never far from her thoughts, nor that confident way he’d taken her hand. She’d felt giddy as a girl at his touch. And then the shame of it washed all exhilaration away.
Maybe it wasn’t counted a sin to feel something for a man, even a married man. A body couldn’t help that, could it? She reckoned it was only wrong if you fed, or acted on, those misplaced feelings.
And that she would never do.
Once Sion had looked at Tempe like he would a fetching flower or a striking sunset. Impartial. A thing to be momentarily admired then forgotten. But here lately . . .
His remedy was to push harder, to be so preoccupied with the task at hand and the danger that they drove out any notice of her. But the magic of the night had snuck up on him. Here she was, off watch, studying the sky like she’d never seen it before, open wonder in her face. Hardened as he was, he wanted to chuckle at her being so childlike, and then he found himself rummaging through his haversack like the moon had worked some spell.
In minutes his field glasses were in hand. Likely she’d never seen such. Removed from their leather case, their old-style workmanship seemed heavy. Sion took care not to startle her, but he’d noticed she’d begun to be a bit upended in his presence. Because of his being so quiet, he reckoned, both in movement and in speech.
Coming up behind her, he murmured her name and she half turned. He reached for her rifle and traded it for the field glasses. When she simply turned them over like they were little more than a Gunter’s chain, he set both their guns aside. Enclosing her fingers in his, he positioned the glasses and raised them to her eyes, aiming for the North Star.
Her smile was his reward. “Such a fearsome sight. These spectacles put me there so close it seems like the stars might cut me if I were to reach out and grab hold.”
“Star showers . . . and that long sweep of lights that has the look of a gourd. Two of them.”
“Ursa Major . . . the plough.”
The field glasses came down. “Why are they called such?”
“You’d rather they be the Two Gourds?” His voice was husky with mirth.
“Maybe.”
He circled behind her, pointing. “Notice the seven stars in each. Two outer stars—Dubhe and Merak—point to the North Star, or Polaris. All together they form a pattern. Like a bear.”
“A bear? Now that’s fanciful.”
Another chuckle rose inside him, followed by a bittersweet twinge when she said, “I never knew the stars had names till you surveyors came round. You’re besotted with the stars.”
“Aye.” They were speaking in unwise whispers when any talk was risky. He was violating his own rule for quiet, yet the need to speak, to break the everlasting monotony, gnawed at him. Or was it merely the sound of her lilting voice?
And then, as abruptly as he’d handed her the field glasses, she returned them to him, taking up her gun in such a way he knew she was alarmed. Silently cursing his negligence, he reached for Annie and they took cover. But it was only a southwesterly wind kicking up, rustling the summer-dry grasses.
“You expect Mister Lyon will ever show himself?”
Sion mulled his answer. “I suspect Raven is befuddling him in that cane, teaching him a lesson he won’t soon forget.”
Her profile turned thoughtful, the dimple in her cheek more pronounced when she wasn’t smiling. “A cane field at night can be a fearsome thing. Once Pa—”
He cocked his head toward her as she stuttered then righted herself.
“People tell of coming through the Barrens and sleeping in the cane to hide themselves,” she finished.
“There’s no call to sleep. We’ll just cut straight through.”
“You’ll go on without Raven and Mister Lyon?”
“If they’re not here soon, aye. Raven’s a master tracker. He’ll catch up to us.” He read resistance in her sudden silence. “Mind telling me why he agreed to come on this jaunt when he’s so all-fired opposed to surveyors?”
“He owes me a good deed, is all.”
A mighty big one, likely. He wouldn’t press her for particulars, but the question wouldn’t let him be. Might her heart be tied up in it? For all his Indian-ness, Raven was a tolerable-looking fellow, his stamina staggering. Sometimes Sion was hard put to keep up with him. He felt a queer churning. Of all emotions, jealousy was hardest to stomach.
Sudden misery led him to ask, “Are you partial to him, Tempe?”
“Me?” She turned the full force of her gaze his way, her eyes a bold black in the moonlight. “He’s my friend, if that’s what you mean.”
He listened hard, expecting her to say no more. But she continued, surprising him with her candor. “I never expected his owing me a favor would gain you a guide.”
“He’s partial to you.”
“Partial?” She all but chuckled. “You’ve pegged Raven wrong if you’re saying what I think you’re saying.”
Was she that blind? He felt both aggrieved and relieved. Raven did favor her, whether she owned it or not. What he couldn’t pin down were her feelings for him.
Her voice came so soft he wasn’t sure he heard her right. “Does it matter?”
She had him there. Did it?
He leaned into his rifle, wishing Raven and Cornelius back. It was nigh on midnight now, his fretfulness rising. They should be pushing farther west when the moon was most obliging.
She looked at the ground, the wind tugging at her braid. “I’ve been wondering about Ma and Russell. Paige. Whether the inn’s still standing or little more than ashes.”
The melancholy in her tone nicked him. He wanted to reach out and pull her hat free to better see her face. “You’re still thinking of the war party headed that way.”
“I can think of little else.” There was no blame in her tone, but he felt as guilty as if she’d pointed her finger at him.
Her uncertainty about the inn rattled him. He doubted it would fall, having stood this long, but who knew? Again he wrestled with the thought of sending her back. “You should see home again by fodder-pulling time.” At her uneasy silence he said, “A fortnight’s surveying and then we aim for the Falls of Ohio. There we part.”
It sounded sensible. Practical. Mournful. Again came that odd, unwelcome sensation that she mattered more than she should, that she’d somehow gained a foothold when his guard was down. Emotions long buried thrust through the hardened soil of his heart and head and turned him tender.
He fisted his hand lest he reach for her. Tempe gave him much to admire. Much to question. The matter of her father, what brought her family into Kentucke, remained a riddle. Time would tell, Nate always said. But for the moment, with the moonlight pouring down, calling out every fetching feature . . .
He was no longer just besotted with the stars.