17

“Let me help you.”

Joseph shook his head, breathing too hard to form a proper refusal. This was his problem and he’d fix it. He lowered one pail to the ground and splashed the other against the barn wall. The black lines ran with the water. The cursed word faded. But not quite into oblivion. Even fifteen pails of water couldn’t wash it from his mind.

Tory.

They’d accused him of being a traitor.

Jaw clenched until it hurt, he emptied the next pail.

Sixteen.

Hannah watched on, her eyes wide, mouth drawn tight.

He made four more trips to the well before he was too tired not to be satisfied. Joseph dropped the empty pails to the ground. One rolled against the wall. Any gratification of erasing the word was lost in the worry flipping his stomach. He’d been branded a Tory. His family was no longer safe. He thanked God only charcoal had been used, but the warning was clear. Nothing kept them from using flames next time.

“When I’m finished with chores, I’m riding down to talk to Andrew and Rachel. Stay in the cabin and load my musket.”

Hannah had her arms hugged across her stomach.

Perhaps she felt as sick as he. Such a little thing. The need to protect her reared within him as it had when Cyrus Acker started talking about her brothers. “Just in case. I won’t be gone long.”

“Joseph…”

“Just stay put, as I said.” Maybe he should take her along, but he needed to think clear, and that was becoming increasingly difficult with her around.

Her head tipped forward. “Do you want me to fix you some breakfast?”

Joseph almost laughed. He probably wouldn’t be able to force food down if he wanted to. “I don’t have time for that. Just go on into the cabin, and for once, don’t argue with me.” He had enough on his mind.

~*~

He wouldn’t be gone long. Hannah had no time to delay, or to second guess her decision. She had to leave now.

Head spinning, she took up a small satchel and pushed in the remaining cornmeal cake from the morning before. She would leave her buckskin leggings behind—they would only get her into more trouble. Though cumbersome, she’d wear one of Fannie’s gowns with the shawl to ward off the chill that still hung during the evenings. She needed nothing else. She’d already taken enough from Joseph.

Stepping from the cabin, Hannah glanced upward and blinked at the brightness of the sun. What if the Great Creator whom Mama had taught her of was the same as the God Andrew spoke of and Joseph prayed to? What if one could call upon His name and beg His mercy? Would He help?

Though she’d intended to bypass the barn, Hannah couldn’t deny the pull of the new foal. She hadn’t seen it in the light of day.

The mare nickered as Hannah stepped inside. She left the door open to light the stall where the spry filly stood on long legs. “Skennen’kó:wa kenh ontiatenro’shón:a?” How are you, my friends? She crawled into the pen and cornered the filly so she could stroke the shiny chestnut coat. So like Hunter’s. “You’ll grow as beautiful as your sire, won’t you? You have his spirit, as well. I can see it already.” Hannah crouched low and pressed her forehead to the warm, silky neck. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

But she did. And neither wishes nor prayers changed that. She needed to know for sure if Myles had really been executed so brutally, and whether or not Samuel had somehow survived. And she needed to give Joseph back his name. She’d not been braced for how deeply the word ‘Tory’ would wound him. But it had. She’d seen it in his face, and his determination to clean away every last smudge of black from the wall.

Even a week ago she would have been glad. She would have told him he deserved to know how she and her family had felt to be so despised by their neighbors. Instead, she only wanted to spare him that pain. She wanted to keep him safe.

Something he would never be so long as she remained.

~*~

Joseph swung from Hunter and charged to the Wyndham cabin. The ride from home had only etched the image of the charred letters into his mind all the more. They taunted. After years of fighting at their sides, losing Pa, and even some of his own blood, how could his neighbors so quickly turn against him?

“What are you doing here?” Rachel jerked upright in Ma’s rocking chair set by the fireplace.

Martha started to cry.

A fine greeting. He was in the mood to skip niceties anyway. “Where’s Andrew?”

“Out in the south field.” She resumed rocking and Martha quieted.

Joseph glanced around. The cabin seemed strangely empty. “Where are the children?”

“After you left, the Reids took James home with them for the night, and Sarah’s still sleeping. Did Hannah arrive home all right?”

“Yes, fine.” He turned to go.

“Then what is wrong?”

“Acker’s stirring up trouble.” He’d spare her the details. “I need to talk to Andrew.” Because they needed to do something about it before someone got hurt, and Joseph was too angry to think straight—something Andrew was capable of in any situation. Well, almost any.

“What kind of trouble?”

Joseph hardly heard Rachel’s question as he jogged out and across the yard to the foot bridge. The stream wound through the property, separating them from acres of fertile land they’d cleared to the south. He didn’t have far to go before Andrew’s lone form came into view, sack over his shoulders. Planting more corn. His arm rose and fell with each handful of seed he spread.

“What, do you not trust me to sow a single furrow without supervision?” Andrew’s eyes twinkled with humor.

“You have planted half the field already, so obviously…” Joseph’s witty response crumbled by the wayside. “I have much more pressing things on my mind.”

Andrew frowned. “What happened?”

“Tory. They wrote it in charcoal across the barn while we slept last night.”

“Cyrus Acker, or others?”

“Not sure. From what I could tell, there were four or five horses.”

“So others are involved now. Probably his boy, Levi. And Kastner with his oldest. They usually stick pretty close.” Andrew pulled the sack off over his head. “If we start with Kastner, it will not take us too long to ride to Acker’s farm after.”

“You agree we should confront them, then?” Joseph was surprised, but definitely in the mood for confrontations. On his terms.

“I suggest we call on our neighbors and put out some fires.”

Joseph cracked a smile. “No starting any?”

Andrew shook his head, no amusement apparent. “Let us hope no one feels it should come to that again.”

Again.

A chill clenched Joseph’s spine. Four years ago he’d been detained in Fort Schuyler under suspect of harboring a British spy. A mob of their neighbors had terrorized Rachel and left their barn in ashes. How well he remembered that feeling of being gutted. He’d built the barn with Pa, dead not quite two months. The barn he’d constructed in its place was no more than a shed in comparison, but what of his cabin? And his wife?

Hannah. She wasn’t safe there alone. His muscles surged with the need to hurry. “We’ll pause at home first.” She’d probably laugh at his concern. It was the middle of the day. For some reason mobs preferred the cover of dark.

Joseph volunteered to saddle Andrew’s gelding while he informed Rachel of their plans. Better he do it as Joseph was not in the frame of mind to answer any of his sister’s questions.

Both animals and riders wore a sheen of sweat by the time they reached the Garnet homestead.

“You can wait here.” Joseph forced himself to walk the short distance separating him from the cabin. No one else was here and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. He was overreacting. It was broad daylight, for goodness sakes. He tried the latch and the door swung open with ease. He’d make sure she barred it when he left again. “Hannah?”

No answer.

His boots echoed against the floor as he moved to the bedroom.

No sign of her.

Anger and worry tugged at him from separate directions. Why did she never listen to him? Or had something happened? He twisted back to the main room. No sign of a struggle. The musket remained over the door. Fool girl!

Hunter whinnied in the yard and the mare returned the call. Of course. Hannah wouldn’t be in the house with a new foal in the barn.

“Is everything all right?” Andrew questioned as Joseph stepped from the cabin.

Joseph pushed out a laugh. “Of course.” He’d just forgotten that Hannah wasn’t like Fannie. He could see her now, relaxed against the corner of the stall, a smile curving her lips as she watched the filly. Or maybe she’d be introducing herself to the foal.

As he stepped through the door, he smiled. Maybe now would be a good time to tell her the filly was hers to keep. He’d bribe her to stay in the cabin when he was gone.

But the mare stood over the foal, chickens pecked the ground, and not a person in sight.

“Hannah?”

Where was she?

He wandered to the stall, and then back out into the blinding sunlight. The garden sat barren. As did the closest pastures and fields.

“Hannah?”

“You cannot find her?”

Joseph scratched his fingers through his hair and replaced his hat. He began to search the ground for prints, any clue to where she had gone. She had visited the foal at some point this morning. But then what? Her trail, as far as he could tell, led east…toward the Cunningham homestead.

“I think I know where she went.” He mounted Hunter and reined toward the road. No use breaking a trail through the forest when it wasn’t much farther to go around.

Joseph almost didn’t recognize the place. He’d only returned to the Cunninghams’ homestead once since Hannah’s family had left. Four years ago. After Oriskany. He swallowed back a new wave of nausea.

“Hannah?”

No sign of her anywhere. But she had been there. After some searching, he found tracks leading toward the river. He quickened his pace, letting Andrew follow slower with the horses. From there the tracks turned toward home. But his mistake was evident now. Old and set in mud. Several days at least. This is where she had come after leaving that first day. She’d washed in the river and returned sopping wet, her hair loose and streaming water down her back, her eyes wide and questioning. How had he not recognized her?

Unless he hadn’t wanted to.

“Do not tell me you have lost her.”

“I never had her.”The words where too apt, and stung. “These tracks are old. I followed the wrong ones. We have to go back.”

“Back to where?”

The ones that led from the barn had been fresh. He was sure of that. So back to what remained of the Cunningham cabin. She’d already been here once. Had she hoped to find something more? Or to say goodbye? The thought struck him like a rod across his midsection. Why would she leave?

Too many reasons.

He needed to find her new tracks.

“You do not think straight when it comes to this woman, do you?” Andrew asked. “You used to be good at this.”

“It’s not as though she’s dependent on a broom or dragging her feet.”

Andrew frowned at the memory of his predicament. “She is most fortunate.”

“And she already has a fair head start.” Joseph had wasted valuable time following false leads, something he should have recognized right away.

“You think she does not intend to return?”

“No.” There had been something in her expression when he’d told her to stay put. She hadn’t intended to. With news that Myles might already be dead—possibly Samuel too—she wouldn’t wait any longer. Joseph groaned. “What am I to do?”

“Go after her, of course. You cannot let her travel all the way to Albany and perhaps farther on foot and with no provisions. You promised to assist her. And she is your wife.”

“I know that.” He didn’t need reminding. “But how can I leave with the fields only half sown? And the animals? How can I leave with my home under threat?” What about his children? Indecision threatened to rip him in two. “How can I leave?” But with Hannah out there… “How can I stay?”

Andrew dismounted and faced him. “First, answer me truthfully. If you were to follow her, would it be because of Henry Cunningham? Or because of Hannah?”

Joseph dropped his gaze to his dirt ridden boots, the same boots he had worn when marching along with eight hundred other men—local militia and soldiers under General Nicholas Herkimer—to bring relief to Fort Schuyler, twenty miles upriver and under siege by the British. They had only made it halfway.

Oriskany.

Why did both father and daughter share the same eyes?

“Truthfully… I don’t know.”