Unlike the Braams’, all was order and industry here. Corn thriving ankle high in the surrounding fields. A cabin clearing free of stumps, with half a dozen sturdy outbuildings at first glance, including a new stable. A large fenced garden patch in colorful array to the south. Not just any house but a fortified blockhouse on the west end of a handsome cabin. Most surprising of all was the stone springhouse, the equal of any he’d seen in the east. Swan Station, Cutright had called it. The place looked to have been along the Buckhannon for some time.
They rode in slowly but had already been seen. A great many noises set up at once. A hog grunted noisily and a chicken squawked. The aproned woman coming out of the cabin made a beeline toward them while a bewhiskered young man emerged from a smithy, leather apron tied about his lean waist, red-faced from a small forge fire. His hammering had been heard a ways off.
Clay slid his rifle into its pouch and dismounted to the woman’s greeting. “Colonel Tygart?”
“Aye, Tygart,” Clay replied. “And company.”
“Welcome then. You’re the talk of the border here lately. I’m the widow Swan.” Her gracious manner warmed him. He didn’t miss the start of surprise in her eyes when her gaze fixed on the former captive. He held his peace, waiting for recognition to kindle and confirm one of the Braams was truly among them.
“Keturah?” Uncertainty framed her words. “Heaven be praised! Can it be?” Mistress Swan took a tentative step toward her, a wealth of emotion in her tanned face. “So long it’s been, yet you look the same, only taller. Like your ma.”
Her poignant words narrowed Clay’s attention, yet he didn’t miss the gawking men now in their midst, all in varying degrees of befuddlement. The Swan brothers he’d heard about?
Mistress Swan enfolded Keturah in a plump, homespun embrace once she’d dismounted. And the single, inexplicable tear Clay had witnessed at Fort Pitt faded to the far reaches as Keturah cracked open like a broken water pitcher.
“Watch your hide,” Ross cautioned as Tessa left the river, trading her setting pole for a small willow basket.
Up at first light, she’d accompanied Ross, glad few folks needed ferrying since her mind was set on berrying. Strawberries were abundant this year, bits of scarlet amid the sun-stroked, loamy places. Telltale white blooms promised a good gathering. Never mind if winter-starved deer got there first or the ruby gems had been bird-pecked in places. Such creatures helped scatter the seed.
Her gait was light as she neared home. Her gun she’d left behind at the ferry house. The heavy rifle was an encumbrance, but she’d catch what for from her brothers for her carelessness. Yet sooner or later she must set it aside much like they did when plowing and sowing and doing their many chores.
A peaceable hour passed. Sweat-spackled, her belly and basket full, she came into the cabin clearing. Odd how a body was ill prepared for the most heart-wrenching surprises. No warning hullabaloo. No shadowy feeling. Just a rare lull about the cabin. What had made her brothers abandon their pressing tasks at midday? Had it something to do with the three strange horses grazing around the springhouse?
Voices floated to her across the empty clearing. Most she knew. One was distinct in cadence and tone, a manly volley of English and . . . Indian?
Basket dangling from one arm, she pushed open the cabin door. All her brothers but Ross were gathered around the table. The man at the head, occupying Pa’s place, was one she’d never laid eyes on, as was the black woman to his left. Ma sat with her back to the door in her usual place, unnervingly close to a woman whose pale braid snaked down her slender back.
The woodsy giant was the first to acknowledge her, his gaze swiveling to Tessa as she hovered in the doorway. As it wasn’t his house, he didn’t motion her in.
“Tessa . . .” Jasper spoke in the sudden lull as she entered.
Mindlessly, Tessa set the berries aside.
“Best sit down,” Cyrus said, voice full of portent. “Your long-lost friend has come back to us.”
The braided woman turned, delft-blue eyes searching. Disbelief struck Tessa like a blow.
Keturah?
Her old friend sat before her, once a mere bud of a girl, now blossomed into a full-blown flower of a woman. Keturah . . . who once taught her to write her name . . . who made a game out of chasing deer from the fields . . . who sang like a bird . . . who always called her lieverd . . . who stuffed tow linen in her ears at the firing of the fort guns . . . who kept all Tessa’s secrets and laughed with her like no one since.
Emotion tightened her throat. No greeting could she give that fit the mighty chasm that time and distance had wrought. Yet every eye was upon her, willing her to do something.
Coming from behind, Tessa opened her arms and embraced her old friend. Smoke and earthiness suffused her senses instead of the milky, sugar-laced scent of before.
The conversation resumed around her, none of it answering her needling questions. She sought the open seat between Zadock and Lemuel while Keturah turned around again as easily as if she’d never left. The lively talk was hard to track till her surprise simmered down. Scraps about the militia. Fort spies. Enemy sign. Provisions. Gun powder and bullet lead.
They seemed to skirt the heart of the matter, that Keturah Braam was here, had come back to them, was at their very table. Another discreet glance told her that Keturah was worn. Spent. The slight sag of her features might be called resigned. And her cheeks bore the faintest imprint of dried tears, the dust of the trail marking their downward course.
Was this strapping tree of a man Keturah’s husband? Though seated, he was a full head taller than her brothers. And not nearly as loose-lipped.
“Why, without any kin close at hand, she’ll stay right here,” Ma was saying. “Just us women in the cabin. The men keep mostly to the blockhouse when they’re not in the fields or at the ferry.”
Murmurs of affirmation went round. Finally, Tessa snapped to. The tense tickle in her middle nearly erupted into a laugh at the sight of her brothers’ barely restrained glee. She swallowed all mirth while the man at the head of the table looked straight at Keturah and spoke Indian again.
So, they weren’t wed? Was he asking Keturah where she wanted to be? Penned up at the fort or with the Swans along the spacious Buckhannon? The cabin stilled again. Keturah answered in the dulcet voice Tessa remembered, though the words were gibberish. Somehow it hurt her that she couldn’t understand her former friend yet this tall stranger could. And how was it that a white man could speak Indian so well?
“Seems our company manners have fled, what with all the excitement,” Ma said, looking from the stranger to Tessa. “Colonel Tygart, this is my only daughter, Tessa Swan.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he replied as Tessa inclined her head to acknowledge the introduction.
All her expectations and presumptions collapsed in a disheartening heap. Was this truly Colonel Clayton Tygart or some buckskinned imposter? He was not at all like she’d expected. Nothing like she’d hoped.
She studied him beneath lowered lashes, but the shadows in the cabin were too deep even in daylight to grasp hold of him. All she knew was that he was tall and as soot-haired as Keturah was fair.
They were locked out of the conversation for several more moments as he spoke to Keturah. And then he said in plain King’s English, “She will stay.”