Maddie’s face fell, but a famished Jude only looked up from his plate to reach for the salt cellar.
“Where does that leave her till you figure out what to do next?” Maddie asked.
Clay pondered his answer.
“She won’t tolerate the fort long, living free like she’s been,” Jude said as he chewed. “A fort is naught but a cage to an Indian.”
“And all those white eyes.” Maddie knew firsthand what it was like to be an outsider. Though free, she wasn’t always treated so and often chafed against a fort’s narrow confines herself.
“Once I put out the call to muster the militia tomorrow, I’ll take Miss Braam out to her old homeplace and start there.” Why he’d start there Clay couldn’t explain. It was bound to be emotional for her if any of her childhood memories remained or resurfaced, not to mention the absence of her white kin. “Care to come along?”
“I’ll join you,” Maddie answered without pause.
“Till the forenoon then.”
8
They rode out under a ten o’clock sun that promised to melt them by noon. Keturah Braam was abreast of him, Maddie behind. Clay sensed the Dutch captive’s relief to be beyond fort walls. It matched his own. Out here they escaped the rising stench of the fort’s privy pits and the manure-laden livestock pens, a potent combination in the May heat, and breathed deeply of the forest-cleansed air.
Now, in late spring, the lush woods were at full frolic before starting a slow slide toward autumn. It didn’t take long for Keturah to slip from her unsaddled mare and gather a palmful of early strawberries. She extended a hand, offering the first pickings to Clay, a smile on her berry-stained lips.
How could he refuse? He thanked her in both English and Lenape, popping the offering in his mouth. Next to marrow bones slow roasted around a campfire on a cold winter’s day, strawberries—summer’s best fruit—were his favorite food.
Maddie soon dismounted and joined Keturah while he stayed atop his horse, rifle resting in the crook of one arm, gradually getting his bearings in new territory.
Joseph Cutright had told him the whereabouts of the Braam cabin, but they were in no hurry to get there. He’d kept quiet about their destination, and now Keturah had turned it into a strawberry-picking expedition.
“Do you know the legend?” he asked her in Lenape.
She looked over at him, her hands busy with the berries. “How the Great Spirit made the first man and woman, and they quarreled? The woman ran away and the man could not catch her.”
Surprised by her wealth of words, Clay tamped down his desire to hurry. “To help him, the Great Spirit created a patch of strawberries, hoping to delay her. She stopped and ate this new fruit, and finally the man caught up to her and said he was sorry.”
Keturah nodded. “They called the fruit heart berry because it is shaped like a heart and reunited them forever.”
“Tehim,” he said, resurrecting the old word. “Strawberry.”
He studied her as she remounted her mare. Had she no angst about the day she was taken, picking berries as she’d been? Mayhap she’d forgotten that or refused it entry.
She looked at him, a curious light in her eye. “Someday you must tell me your own story. And why you speak the Lenape tongue so well.”
He said nothing to this, kneeing Bolt forward.
It took an hour of dense woods, two creeks, a thorny tangle of grapevine, and a bear sighting before they reached what looked to be the border of the Braams’ deserted homestead.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clay watched Keturah’s expression. Placid as a doe’s. At least till they got in sight of the cabin. In the noon glare, all the abandonment lay exposed. Every overturned cart, barrel, and rusted hinge. The sagging springhouse roof. A lightning-split hickory crushing a corncrib. All told that the Braams had been gone a long time.
Once again Keturah slid off her mare and began a slow walk to the well. She knelt there by the tumbled stones, eyes on the grass as if searching for something.
Maddie came abreast of Clay, her words more whisper. “Reckon we should follow?”
“Best let her go first.” He looked to the pommel of his saddle, the downward slant of his felt hat cutting the sun’s glare but turning his hairline itchy.
Something about the scene was too tender to witness. Half of him was glad she’d returned to ghosts. Betimes an actual reunion was too much to bear.
“What did McKee say happened to her Indian family?” Maddie asked him. “Before she was brought in to Pitt?”
“Something about disease cutting half the tribe down.” He watched a ring snake slither away beneath a rotted stump. “Notice the old scars on her throat and arms? My guess is she survived the disease as a child before living with the Lenape, then lost her Indian family to it not so long ago.”
“I wondered why she’s not put up a fight to rejoin the Indians. She seems surrendered to coming back here.”
“So far, aye.”
After a few minutes Maddie dismounted, intent on the cabin. Keturah had set foot on the porch but made no move to open the cabin door. What would she find? Moreover, what would doing so unleash?
Clay’s gaze dissected the surrounding woods for any untoward movement. He blinked, eyes stinging from lack of sleep in an ill-fitting bed. Since his captivity he’d preferred the ground, a cushion of moss or leaves beneath him.
At first light he’d met with the fort’s four spies, needing to add to their number. Scouting was an unenviable job. He’d gotten his start spying at Fort Henry under General Amherst years ago.
Veering away from that sore mental trail, he pondered telling Keturah his story as she’d asked. Rarely did he unearth it, letting his past gather dust and fall into disuse like the Braams’ homestead. Most folks didn’t understand the path he’d trod. Or didn’t want to.
The women went into the cabin, Maddie leading. Keturah hovered on the threshold for a few indecisive seconds. Maddie was a godsend even if she didn’t speak Lenape. In her quiet way, she’d begun teaching—rather, reminding—Keturah of simple English words. Soap. Bowl. Milk. Corn.
A flicker of movement by a laurel to his left snagged his eye. A sun-dappled fox was all it amounted to. His shoulders relaxed though his mind stayed wary. The last spate of trouble, Cutright told him, started near the Buckhannon ferry last month. Two clashing tribes. One brave killed. The fort was briefly besieged after that by a small party of Wyandot, leaving one settler with a shattered elbow but no fatal wounds. Since then, nary a whiff of unrest, though Indian sign continued to be plentiful.
Keturah and Maddie emerged into the sunlight. The cabin door closed. Keturah lingered at the well again, picking up the water pail severed from its rope as if wondering how it happened to be so. Finally, they were on their way again, Keturah looking lost in thought.
“Where to now?” Maddie asked Clay.
“Closest neighbor—Swans. Their land borders the river.”
Mightn’t Keturah remember her former neighbors?
Their horses went at a walk, Clay intent on giving her ample time to adjust to her former surroundings. Once the Swan homestead spread before them, Keturah’s expression seemed unchanged. Or did he note a faint flicker of recognition?