Is something wrong, Katarina?”
The moment Annie whispered the statement she realized how ridiculous it must sound. What was not wrong? Food and water had dwindled to dangerous levels. Over the past two days, three people had died, including Pritch Callahan, who’d finally succumbed to his wounds. But as she crossed the garrison house in the predawn darkness, Annie suspected something more personal caused Katarina Hoffmeier’s muted sobs.
In the dim space, lit only by the hearth’s glowing embers, Annie carefully maneuvered around the many dark, sleeping forms of women and children scattered about the floor. Even with both the front and back doors open, the smell of unwashed bodies, sickness, and despair hung heavily in the air. She was grateful that the men, when weather permitted, slept on the porch or on pallets in the yard to help relieve the crowding.
As Annie neared the fireplace, sympathy twanged hard inside her at the sight of the robust German girl. Katarina’s substantial frame shook convulsively as she bent to feed kindling into the hearth’s glowing throat.
“Has Giselle worsened?” Annie pressed her hand against Katarina’s trembling shoulder. Yesterday Katarina’s mother had suffered terribly with a stomach ailment.
Katarina sniffed and ran a hand under her nose as she shook her head. “Nein.” She angled a weak smile at Annie and patted her belly. “Mutter is better now.”
Katarina tossed another piece of wood into the fireplace, sending red and orange sparks flying amid a puff of gray ash. She straightened and her red-rimmed blue eyes quickly swept the room as if to assure herself that the other occupants, now rousing from sleep, paid them no heed.
Turning her attention back to Annie, she pressed a hand against her chest and drew in a ragged breath. “My heart, it hurts. Afraid I am that they not come back. That they die.” New tears slid down her round cheeks, making meandering little trails that glistened in the firelight.
Annie didn’t have to ask to whom Katarina referred. She patted the girl’s arm as a surge of renewed fear gripped her own chest. In the five days since Brock, Johann, and Ezra left for Fort French Lick, Annie’s lungs had felt incapable of holding a full breath of air. Every beat of her heart was a prayer for the safety of the man she loved, as well as the safety of Johann and Ezra.
Obviously Katarina was stricken with the same worries about Brock. Jealousy slithered up from some dark, ugly place inside Annie. Her conscience rose and swatted it down. If Brock returned safely and chose Katarina for his bride, Annie would wish them well. Her wounded heart would wail out its grief and carry its scars to the grave, but she would accept God’s verdict.
Annie patted Katarina’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, ma chère. God will protect and deliver us. Remember the words of our Lord that Obadiah read to us last night? ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’” She mustered up as confident a smile as she could manage. “The Northwest Rangers will come. We will be saved. Brock used to scout for the army. If anyone can get past the Indians to Fort French Lick, he can.”
Katarina glanced around the room again, and Annie followed her gaze. Light fingers of dawn reached through the open windows and doorways, illuminating the figures that had awakened and were now milling about the place. Children cried and quarreled. Mothers soothed and chided. The constant buzz of voices blended with the jumble of noises generated by many people living in close quarters.
“Come.” Katarina bent and lifted two oak buckets from beside the hearth. “Time to milk, it is now. We go milk together, Ja?” She held one bucket out to Annie, who wrapped her fingers around the stiff, prickly fibers of the rope handle.
Outside, the crisp autumn morn sent a shiver through her, jerking her fully awake. Overhead, a morning star winked at them from a steel-blue sky. She wished she could see the horizon. But the stockade’s silver-gray pickets hid much of the rich, rosy-gold hues that heralded the sun’s first peek at the earth.
They wended their way through the yard full of stoop-shouldered men who seemed to wander aimlessly, bowed by their despair as if they carried their hopelessness on their backs.
The livestock had grazed every bit of vegetation until there was hardly enough grass to wet Annie’s bare feet with dew as they walked toward the east end of the stockade.
Near the wall of the compound, several cows stood like dark hulks in the dim morning light, tethered side by side to stakes. As Annie and Katarina approached, the animals lowed with such mournful sounds that she wondered if they, too, sensed death lurking.
Persimmon bent her head back and blinked her big, long-lashed eyes at them.
“It’s all right ma bonne fille.” Annie ran her hand along the cow’s side and winced as her fingers bumped across the animal’s ribs. In another few days Persimmon would most likely go dry and have to be slaughtered to provide food for the settlers. The thought pinched Annie’s heart. She loved the young cow that was little more than a heifer, having weaned her first calf last winter.
“It is just me and Katarina coming to get your fine milk, Persimmon.”
They each chose one of the three-legged stools kept nearby. Annie sat down at Persimmon’s right side, while Katarina did the same with a big reddish cow next to Persimmon. With Persimmon’s bulk between them, Annie and Katarina set to their tasks. And for a time, the rhythmic splat, splat of the milk hitting the wooden buckets filled the silence.
“You think they come back, then? You think they … live?” Katarina’s soft voice was almost inaudible over the sound of the milk squirting into the buckets.
Annie paused in coaxing milk from Persimmon’s udders. “Yes, I think they are still alive.” Perhaps it was her own hope clinging to life, but Annie’s heart had twined so tightly with Brock’s, surely she would know if his soul had left his body.
The soft shh, shh, shh sound of Katarina’s milking halted, replaced by another long, ragged sigh. “I beten Sie—pray it be so.”
Sensing the girl felt more comfortable venting her worries with her countenance hidden, Annie quietly resumed her own milking.
“If he die, my heart die, I think….” Katarina’s words dissolved into soft sobs.
The girl’s agony crumpled Annie’s heart. She got up and walked around Persimmon’s head, rubbing the cow’s soft muzzle as she passed. When she reached Katarina, she gently grasped her shoulders, inviting her to stand, and as well as her expanded belly allowed, she embraced her.
Annie clung to the taller girl nearly twice her size, rocking her as if she were a little child. The scent of dew-drenched morning glories, fresh sweet milk, and bitter tears filled Annie’s nostrils as an indescribable pain filled her breast. Why did they have to love the same man?
When Katarina’s sobs had subsided, Annie pushed gently away, but continued to grasp the girl’s shoulders. “I told you, if anyone can make it to Fort French Lick and back alive, it is Brock.”
Katarina snuffed and swiped at her wet, puffy eyes. “Ja.” Her voice sounded almost indignant. “Brock, maybe. He was in army. He know this land. But Johann …” Her rounded shoulders rose and fell in a helpless shrug. “Johann not know land. Not know Indian ways.”
An incredible realization dawned in Annie’s brain like the sun’s golden rays now spilling over the stockade’s weathered, gray pickets. Could she dare to believe it was not Brock, but Johann that Katarina cared for?
Katarina inhaled another tattered breath. “If Johann not come back, then I lose him zweimal.” She held up two fingers, forming a V, as fresh tears cascaded down her face.
At Annie’s perplexed look, Katarina offered a wobbly smile. “We finish milking. I tell you.”
They returned to their tasks, and over the next few minutes, in a mixture of broken English and German, Katarina disclosed how she, Johann, and his late wife, Sophie, had been children together in their small village in Hanover. From what Annie could glean from Katarina’s fractured English, Katarina and Johann had been childhood sweethearts. But when unwed Sophie learned she was with child after receiving news that her sweetheart was killed fighting in Napoleon’s army, Johann married her to save her from shame and shunning.
“It was gut thing Johann do.” A weak smile trembled across Katarina’s full lips. “I love Sophie, too.” She tapped her chest. “My heart sad for me, but happy for Sophie and Johann.”
Annie nodded. She understood the girl’s sentiment exactly. It was the same feeling she’d experienced only moments ago with Katarina.
Katarina’s voice took a sad dip. “But Sophie and Kind gone now … with Gott.”
Her tone lifted again … brighter, sweeter. “When Johann come here, sich grämen …” She paused as if searching for the appropriate English word, then patted her chest. “Hearts cry together.” She brushed away another tear. “Then our hearts”—she clasped both hands together—”again.”
Katarina is in love with Johann, not Brock!
The joy inside Annie threatened to bubble out in a spate of silly giggles. But she tamped down the urge to laugh in deference to Katarina’s heartache.
They retrieved their buckets of milk—both less than half full—from beneath the cows. Feeling a little guilty that her affection for Katarina had grown after her revelation, Annie looped her free arm with the other girl’s.
As they walked together to the garrison house, Annie tried to assure both Katarina and herself that God would hear their prayers and bring the three men safely back to Fort Deux Fleuves.
“Even Ezra,” Annie said with a burst of unrestrained mirth, admitting that she and Ezra had once been sweethearts before she married Jonah.
“After being wed to Jonah and now losing my heart to Brock, I wouldn’t have Ezra if he served himself up to me on a silver platter,” she confided with a giggle.
A commotion erupted in the yard, and Annie and Katarina turned to see what had occurred. The sound of hoofbeats and musket fire outside the compound sent cold fingers of fear skittering up Annie’s spine. Had the Shawnee decided the settlers inside the fort had grown too weak to fight and were storming the compound?
Suddenly the men stationed on the parapet walkway began cheering. In another moment, men rushed to push open the big front gates that had remained closed for weeks.
Riders streamed in and such a deluge of relief washed through Annie it buckled her knees.
“Thank You, Lord! Oh, Jesus, thank You!” She dropped to her knees in earnest now, lifting her hands to heaven along with many others, praising God for the long-awaited arrival of the rangers.
Katarina tugged Annie to her feet and they fell into each other’s arms, all at once laughing and weeping.
Eager to find Brock among the group of strangers milling with Deux Fleuves’ settlers, she scanned the crowd.
Katarina, too, was gazing intently into the faces of the men who’d just arrived. She gasped the same moment Annie saw Johann step away from the crowd, his head pivoting, searching.
With a little shriek, Katarina snatched her skirts away from her feet and sprinted to Johann, who caught her in a fierce embrace.
Still not finding Brock, Annie hurried to Johann and Katarina.
“Johann, where is Brock? Is he here?” Annie continued to search the crowd for Brock’s face. Perhaps he had stayed outside the fort to help the rangers secure it.
Johann set Katarina aside, and his bright smile dragged down in a grim frown.
Fear balled in the pit of Annie’s belly. She focused her attention directly on Johann’s somber face. “Is he here? Johann, please tell me he came back.”
Johann shook his head, and tears welled in the big German’s blue eyes. “Sorry, I am, Annie.”