Grudgingly, she left him, her bare feet returning her to the forked trail she knew so well. Only this time, borne along by some contrary whim, she took the overgrown path, the one she usually shunned. Maybe she should face the past and thereby shake loose the memories that still dogged her.
Her steps slowed. She nearly turned back. Her childish heart had long clung to the Braams’ homeplace, but now she hardly knew it. The tumbled-down fences and caved-in well met her first. How often they’d played near the well on hot days, arranging their dolls for tea parties with acorn cups and other forest furniture.
The log house was much as she recalled with its rare split-shingled roof. How big it had been in childhood. How full of life. Now the woman in her saw it for what it was. Smaller. Faded. A hard beginning. A bitter end. The corncrib and outbuildings all burned and blackened. Weathered farm implements held fast to the ground by a stranglehold of thorny vines and tangled weeds.
Did the wilderness, all this wildness, only take? Did it give nothing back?
Her throat clenched and her eyes smarted as she surveyed what was once hard won and well kept. She came closer, mindful of the tall grass and snakes. The smooth door stone, untrod all these years, was green with moss, the thick slab of door leaning open on rusted hinges. A spasm shuddered through her, half sorrow, half fear. But her hankering for this old place, or the way it used to be, pulsed on.
One foot on the porch and she paused. Dare she go in? Replace her treasured memories with tarnished ones? Swiping at a spiderweb, she stood in the yawning doorway, breathing in dust and disuse.
Little remained inside but a bat in a high eave. Slowly, Tessa walked the edges of the dwelling, at last kneeling in one shadowed corner. Marysee’s rag doll? Or Annika’s? Her fingers closed around it, and she struggled to stay stoic. Leaning her rifle against a log wall, she caressed the worn fabric and faded embroidered face.
Lord, help Keturah. Bring her back to her family.
’Twas a prayer she had prayed for so long it seemed rote as arithmetic. Keturah’s family was not here but somewhere overmountain. Inexplicably they’d left the settlement not long after their daughter’s disappearance. To protect their other children, Ma always said.
Without thought, she reached for one of the few remaining things in the cabin. A cobwebbed broom. The floor was littered with last autumn’s leaves swept in by the wind. She swept them out again, though some crumbled to dust, and then she closed the door behind her, her gun in hand, the doll in her pocket.
Three days into the journey, Clay traded the river valley for a ridge, glad for the shade and invisibility. Moccasin tracks—a party of six all told—along a rushing creek the day before had led to a cold camp last night and today’s wary heights.
Jude had gone ahead on foot, his horse tethered at the end of the column. Few could outfox Jude. With Miss Braam behind him, Maddie came last. She preferred walking to riding and did so now, acting as rear guard. Tireless, keen-sighted, she seemed twin to Jude.
Clay took advantage of the near privacy to speak to Keturah Braam. In English. On foot beside her mare, he never let his gaze settle as he kept watch, pitching his voice purposefully low.
“We’re halfway to the Buckhannon River, where I believe you once lived.” He spoke slowly, giving her time to adjust to the fact he would not resort to Lenape. “Might behoove you to talk the white talk. Father . . . Mother.”
Though he didn’t look at her, he sensed she understood some of what he said, her lovely face at first clouded with confusion and then clearing.
“Kahèsëna Hàki?” Her voice was pleasing, even delicate, with that whistling lilt peculiar to the Lenape.
“Mata.” Nay. He continued slowly. “Not our mother earth.”
“Kahèsëna Xàskwim?”
A smile pulled at him. Was she . . . teasing? “Mata,” he said again. “Not our mother corn.”
Her gaze held his unflinchingly when he said, “Anati.” Dear mother. There was no mistaking it, the tender word still sweet, though he’d not tasted it for years.
She gave a cursory nod, erasing any playfulness of before. And then, as if wanting to please him, she said slowly and unmistakably in English, “Mo-ther.”
He repeated it if only to reinforce it. Would she even recognize her birth mother with so many years and experiences between them?
His thoughts veered to Colonel Bouquet’s wrenching release of Indian captives years before. One circumstance rode roughshod over all the rest. Taken as a little child, one young woman looked forlornly at the strange white faces waiting to claim lost kin. No hint of recognition stirred on either side. Someone finally suggested the mother sing a hymn. The poignant words were easily recalled.
Alone, yet not alone, am I,
Though in this solitude so drear;
I feel my Savior always nigh,
He comes the weary hours to cheer.
I am with Him, and He with me,
Even here alone I cannot be.
Before the song had ended, the tearful captive had flung herself into her aging mother’s arms. The words and image had clung to him ever since.
Let it be the same for Keturah Braam.
7
Tessa set the tattered rag doll on the cabin mantel, then thrust it back into her pocket. ’Twas only a matter of time till her keen-eyed brothers spied its presence. Jasper, likely. Though he wouldn’t place the doll, he’d want to know the story behind it. Ma would get misty-eyed as she always did on the rare occasions the Braams were mentioned. Mayhap she’d best secret the doll away in her curtained corner. Yet as she took a step in that direction, a voice she’d not heard for more than two months cut across the clearing. Jasper’s bottomless laugh filled Tessa to the brim. Home from overmountain?
Tessa nearly tripped in her haste to the cabin’s open door. She drank her oldest brother in as he stood there. Mercy, how lean. And bewhiskered. The string of packhorses behind him bespoke weariness and distance, saddlebags stuffed with necessities in exchange for ginseng and furs.
Ma was just ahead of her, already running to meet him with the gait of a girl. Spry she was at midcentury, her silvered braid spilling down her back. Skirts in hand, Tessa dashed after her, the dust of the yard soft beneath her feet.
Jasper caught them both up in a bearish, trail-worn embrace. It squeezed the breath right out of Tessa.
“A few weeks overmountain and I find you taller and even prettier,” he teased, winking.
“I quit growing a long time ago, you furry rascal,” she shot back.
He spat a stream of tobacco juice into a clump of weeds, making her wrinkle her nose in distaste. Trail tobacco was a reward for so arduous a journey. She’d tried it once, but it made her fluttery-stomached.
“Nary a speck of trouble,” he replied to Ma’s question. “Though the price of a pretty petticoat now trumps a brass kettle.”
Tessa smiled. He’d remembered? But first the unpacking and inspecting and storing. Anticipation made her steps light.
By suppertime, all was in order, the seven of them lining the trestle table. Jasper always brought something for them all.
For Ma, a Holland handkerchief and a hard cone of loaf sugar wrapped in purple paper. For her brothers, some hand tool or implement sufficed. Enjoying her expectation, Jasper made her wait till everything else had been distributed. Her parcel was store wrapped and tied with twine. She sat it upon her aproned lap as every eye settled on her.