21

By the time they’d reached Big Sand Run a few leagues beyond Fort Tygart, the night’s rain had pushed farther west, and an odd south wind rustled the thick July leaves. Jude rode silently behind Clay as the sun cracked open bright as an egg yolk on the eastern horizon. Already they’d come across plentiful sign since leaving the fort, confirming the latest scouting report. The territory seemed to be swarming yet the Indians stayed hidden, tomahawks sheathed.

Half a dozen spies had ridden out at daybreak, scattering in different directions. Jude was assigned to the gaps and low places in the mountains for thirty miles or so, to a point where he’d meet with spies from the next fort. But the well-placed plan didn’t give Clay any ease.

“Don’t get near enough to danger that you can punch it with your ramrod,” Clay told him as they forded yet another stream. “I just need fresh word of any movement or action.”

“Aye.” Jude’s bay horse snorted, nearly masking his assent. “Glad I am of the rain. Otherwise we’d sound like buffalo coming through a canebrake with the woods so dry.”

Clay gave a nod, recalling Maddie’s long look at Jude as they’d left the fort. “I’ve a mind to keep you forted up. Or assign you to the settlement harvest.”

“Naw, Clay. Lord knows I’m always itching to roam. Soon enough I’ll be tied to home with winter and a baby comin’. And me still feeling like Methuselah. For now, I need to be free of fort walls.”

“Take heed then. There’s no replacing you.”

“A babe needs a father, amen. See you at week’s end.” With that, Jude was off, eclipsed by the deep woods.

Clay pressed on, skirting the Buckhannon as it flowed north, thinking once again how well suited it was for a gristmill, not only a ferry. He’d seen Tessa laboriously grinding a great quantity of corn with a hand mill outside Hester’s, no small feat. With so many brothers to manage the labor of building and so much riverfront acreage, a gristmill seemed a worthy pursuit. Mayhap on his own land along the Monongahela someday . . .

His thoughts canted backwards, not forward. He’d not bade Tessa good night once Heckewelder and his party returned to their blockhouse quarters. He’d simply made his rounds despite the downpour, passing by Hester’s at the last, half hoping a candle would still be burning. If so, he might have stopped by that unshuttered window. The temptation had been just about more than he could stand, hastening his step as he checked the horses and magazine, the watch and both gates. As he finished, his disappointment at finding that light out was keen enough that he’d fallen asleep far later than he wanted. Tessa Swan even stormed his dreams.

His double-mindedness gnawed at him. With her continually in reach, he’d lost his edge. He’d come here without any ties or motivations besides manning a garrison in the midst of an ongoing border war. A besotted commander was unfit for the job.

Back off, Tygart.

Despite that, he’d wanted to escort Tessa home this morning, a fool’s errand when she already had her brothers and Heckewelder’s party as escort. So he’d left out ahead of daybreak when she was just stirring. In the cabin next to him to boot, hair streaming down behind closed doors, in her smallclothes. That contemplation was enough to drive a man mad.

He bent his mind to the trail once again, coming to a deep gorge rimmed with hemlock, the water snow-white as it twisted and foamed over boulders on its journey to the west fork of the Monongahela River. How he wished he could cleanse his own thoughts, wash his mind free of Tessa in kind, and return to the untethered man he’d been. Yet when he was near her, his resolve crumbled like a sandy wall.

He tried to take a step back, look at her dispassionately. Raised with so many brothers, she bore that unflinchingly honest edge considered unbecoming in most women, yet it only turned her more fetching. No powder. No pomp. Just unadorned decency. And a bone-deep beauty beginning with her startling violet-blue eyes.

Was he wrong to pray that the Lord would remove this ill-timed attraction and his growing need for her?

He’d been moved to his boots when she’d joined hands with him across the breakfast table that May morn. Praying seemed as natural as breathing to her. Only she’d asked him to say grace, making him resurrect the long-forgotten blessing of his childhood that may well have fallen from his father’s lips. It only added to his yearning for a family to call his own.

And then yesterday, alone with her in the blockhouse, he’d been so taken by what she’d said about one’s soul being knit to another’s that he’d opened the Bible Heckewelder left him and tried to find the passage she spoke of. At midnight he’d put it down with the hope he’d return to it tonight.

Even now, sunk in reflection, he wasn’t fully present. The faint tinkle of a bell carried on the rising wind, a warning he might have missed. Before it faded, he’d slid off Bolt. Up this high, with cabins far below, the sound didn’t ring true. ’Twas a favorite trick of Indians to steal from belled livestock and lure settlers near enough to ambush.

Had he and Tamanen not done it?

He gripped his rifle harder, the memory carrying a lick of regret. Keturah had married well within the tribe. Tamanen of the Wolf Clan was well chosen. Mayhap her desire to go with Heckewelder was founded on a desire to reunite with Tamanen. Clay’s own marriage had been thwarted by the treaty that took him away from the Lenape, yet his thoughts stretched back to a misty memory of the woman his Indian mother hoped he would choose. Ganoshowanna. Falling Water. What had become of her?

The bell ceased tinkling. The sigh of the wind was the only sound other than a hawk’s cry. He got back into the saddle and pressed higher, harder, rocks scattering beneath Bolt’s clambering hooves into the streambed far below.

No matter how hard he rode, how far he roamed, Tessa followed.

Without Keturah the cabin seemed less like home. The time she’d been with them had added a new depth and dimension keenly felt in her absence. Pondering it, Tessa gathered the rest of the melons by herself, sitting down beside the burgeoning wooden sled when done and allowing herself a moment’s melancholy.

This morning when she’d awakened to that empty trundle bed, she’d lain very still, listening to Ma’s usual noises at the hearth. The thunk of wood added to the cook fire. The dry scent of toasted bread. And finally, coffee, its fragrance filling the cabin’s far corners, teasing her brothers awake in the adjoining blockhouse.

This morn there was no sleepy wëli kishku, which surely meant good morning or good day. What she most remembered were Keturah’s last Lenape words, which Heckewelder had translated when he’d seen her chin trembling as she and Keturah embraced.

Làpich knewël. Goodbye. I will see you again.

Would she? Keturah was going so far. There were countless dangers, even though she was dressed again as a Lenape woman in the clothes she’d abandoned upon coming here.

“Take care, Keturah. Our door is always open to you.” Tessa’s words were shaky as a surge of emotion threatened her stoicism. “There’s been no friend to me like you. I expect there never will be.”

Keturah gave a tremulous smile suffused with joy and heartache as she stepped away from Tessa’s embrace. The hide pouch about her neck bulged. The old doll?

Tessa took a long look at her, praying the memory held. As she watched Heckewelder’s party vanish into the dense woods, all her hopes seemed to vanish with them.

Keturah did not look back. That tore Tessa’s heart in two. ’Twas all she could do not to run after her. Gone was her beloved childhood friend. Again. While her family looked on, all but Jasper, she’d fisted her hands at her sides and set her jaw till it ached. Ma cried openly, dabbing at her eyes with her apron, while Zadock seemed the most bewildered, finding the woman he’d hoped would look his way instead wed to a warrior who could lift his scalp.

Keturah’s going left more than an empty place at table, one less hand to lighten the work. It seemed a small death, reminding Tessa of Pa’s and the bottomless well of emptiness he’d left behind. Even Snuff seemed mournful, ears drooping. How she wished she was more like Ross, face turned toward the sun.

“Don’t tie yourself in knots,” he said quietly as they lost sight of Heckewelder’s party and resumed their chores. “Look how the Lord provided a companion in that Mingo woman. And how Heckewelder talks Indian like he was born to it. Could be a sight worse. But I’ll miss Keturah, I’ll give you that.”

Ross always dwelt on the light side, his faith practical, almost childlike, forever mining the good out of the darkest depths. Even when Pa passed he’d received a thrashing from Jasper when he’d said with raw honesty, “Just think on it, Pa’s gout don’t vex him now that he’s in his eternity box.”

Tessa had chuckled through her tears at the time, earning a stern look from the rest of them, but what Ross said was true then and now. Keturah could not have better company than the Moravians, no matter where she roamed. And surely heaven was the best remedy for what ailed Pa, or anyone else, for that matter.

“I pray we see her again,” was all Ma said before seeking the solace of the garden.

Recalling it now, Tessa shut her eyes and tried to make peace with it all, only to ponder matters more sore than satisfying.

Like Clay.

Someday, maybe, she’d work up the nerve to speak his name. She’d thought to say it when they left the fort yesterday morning. But the west blockhouse yawned empty and Bolt was missing from the corral. Maddie told her he’d gone out on a scout. Though Clay never left the fort for long, he did take a turn like the rest of his spies. Somehow it comforted her knowing he was out there somewhere. Even now he might be near at hand.

Her eyes roved the tasseling cornstalks, her whole being wishing he’d materialize before her. Their occasional encounters always left her craving more. They’d begun an uncertain dance, she and Clay, and she was unsure of the next step. How did a couple arrive at courtship? When did a man and a woman move beyond a very public muster-day kiss? Maybe she was making too much of matters. His hot-cold regard of her left her in a continual muddle.

Slowly she stood, a bit stiff from sitting so long. Woolgathering, as Hester called it, left her forgetting the time. Taking the hemp rope, she began pulling the sled with its load of melons toward home, the sun at her back.

Lord, let Keturah find happiness. And let Clay find his way to me in Your time.

Clay sat down at Maddie’s table, the fare rivaling Hester’s. Betimes his blockhouse quarters yawned too empty. Hester needed a rest, so he sometimes came here, just as hungry for good company. Maddie and Jude’s tiny cabin was spare but as tidy and clean as Maddie could make it. The finished cradle rested in a corner, crafted from walnut, awaiting winter’s use. Jude had always been a hand with wood.

“Have another helping, Clay.” Like it or not, Maddie replenished his plate, mounding it high with the first of the corn she’d taken from the cob and fried with butter and sweet milk.

“Thought you said your mother was a laundress,” Clay said between mouthfuls. “How’d you become so good a cook?”

“Helps to have a big fort garden,” she returned with a smile as she finished frying the last of the catfish. “And a husband handy with a hook.”

“Sure beats being on the trail.” Jude pulled a fish bone from between his teeth. “Though I did partake of a fine slab of blackberry pie at Cox’s Station near the tail end of my last scout.”

“Berry, you say? The berries are drying up on the vine, Hester tells me.” Maddie gestured to the rafters, where a berry basket Keturah had made hung empty.

The sight put him in mind of Heckewelder, how far their party had traveled. Though Keturah was no longer at Swan Station, Indian sign abounded up and down the border, confirmed by the string of forts and stations. Should he heed the growing cry for reinforcements, more soldiers? If Fort Tygart was undermanned and fell . . .

Maddie’s voice drew him back to the present. “Wonder what’s happening a bit south of here?”

He chuckled. “Just say it plain, Maddie.”

“All right, I will. How is the lovely Miss Swan? I see you’re wearing a pair of the stockings she made you.”

“You don’t miss much.”

“I was trained to keep a sharp eye, being a camp follower with the army. Same as you, remember.”

“Fair enough.” Clay set down his fork. “I haven’t seen Miss Swan in a fortnight or better, not since Heckewelder’s leaving.”

“Shame on you, Clayton Tygart.” Her aggravation always warranted the use of his full name. “Here it is late July and the belle of the Buckhannon is languishing.”

Jude gave a low whistle. “You sure use some hoity-toity words.”

Maddie shot Clay another beseeching look.

“Once the harvest is in, things might be different.” Clay knew his noncommittal remarks earned him no favor with Maddie no matter the reason or season.

“Well, Colonel Tygart,” she said in her gruffest tone, “I urge you to be a part of the guard you assigned at Swan Station once the harvest commences.”

He winked. “Is that an order, Maddie?”

“As close as I can get to ordering you, aye.” With that, she whisked his empty plate away. “Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say?”

“Winter’s a mite better for courting.”

“Hmm.” She began stacking plates. “Winter, my eye, when the snow’s so high you can’t even get the gates open, much less shuffle south.”

He chuckled despite himself. Maddie meant well, but he didn’t need her meddling any more than he needed Hester’s matchmaking. “All in good time.”

“Good time?” She arched her brow at him. “You—”

“If I could get a word in . . .” Jude winked at her, his voice taking on the gravity of a preacher’s. “Such talk puts me in mind of what ol’ Daniel said. All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.”

Maddie paused. “Boone said that?”

“To my hearin’, aye, right before we buried Braddock in ’55.” Jude sat back, eyeing Clay with intent. “You just lack a good wife, is all. Now hear me out. You been stewing about all that Indian sign hereabouts. Stands to reason you’d have one less worry if you just married Miss Swan and brought her to live here at the fort.”

Maddie tossed Clay an I-told-you-so look and poured coffee from a kettle. “Too hot for coffee, but here it is.”

Clay took the dark brew, adding a piece of hammered sugar from Cutright’s store. Despite his resistance, the teasing and talk, their concern for his happiness was genuine and appreciated. “I’ll keep in mind your advice. But since it’s my wife . . .” Even the word sat oddly on his tongue. “And because I’m here to hold the frontier from ene—” he couldn’t use the word enemies though he heard it oft enough—“from Indian outrages, matters of the heart seem frivolous.”

That was as simple as he could state it. Though he wouldn’t speak ill of the dead, he had been one of the officers who’d rolled the heavy wagons over Braddock’s grave beneath the road they’d traveled in retreat. And the few terse, whispered words among the officers about General Braddock were seared to memory.

A man of weak understanding and very indolent . . . Slave to his passions, women and wine.

Let no one say that Clay Tygart, though a humble, near half-breed commander of a rude fort in no-man’s-land, was a man of weak understanding and enslaved to his passions.