He paused at a loophole, scanning the stump-littered clearing that led to the river. The spies still hadn’t returned, a worrisome matter, though any minute they might ride in with good news or ill. If the country continued calm, they might overnight at some agreed-upon rendezvous place till first light. Thankfully there were no shirkers among them anxious to return to the fort for their own comfort. They served the settlement well.
He walked on through the dark, finding all in order but for the incessant barking of a dog near the spring, the only flaw in the moonlit scene. Most of the fort folk were abed, the cabins shuttered, dark boxes.
His moccasined feet trod the slight slope to the east corner, where the cur stood at bristle-backed attention as if desirous of charging that lofty picketed wall. Panther, likely. Jasper had spoken of seeing tracks.
Kneeling, he spoke in Lenape, an old habit he’d never been able to shake around animals. Indians were notoriously fond of their dogs, and he’d come of age with Halfmoon, a lame pup given him at his adoption into the Wolf clan. Of all the things torn from him at his reentry into the white world, he’d missed Halfmoon most.
He ran a callused hand down the dog’s rough back, then gave him a bone he’d picked up on the common. Returning the way he came, he listened, ears taut for the slightest sound. Indians weren’t often night raiders. They mostly struck at dawn after studying their intended target, be it farm or fort.
He checked the locked magazine, the corralled horses, both gates. Bypassing the blackened hulk of the smithy, he skirted the garden, breathing in the scent of sun-warmed soil.
A seated silhouette stopped him. Tessa? She’d left the cabin during their dice game, but he hadn’t thought much about it. The moon slipped free of a cloud, casting her in a gentle pool of light. Tonight her pale cap was the only ruffled thing about her. She looked serene, the poetry book he’d lent her in her aproned lap. Other times it seemed she’d rather spit than speak, like this morning when Hester had sent her to make his breakfast. Now she regarded him coolly, shoulders straight, showing no signs of the wear and tear of the day.
“I thought you’d be abed,” he said in that candid, cut-to-the-chase way he’d never speak to a town-bred girl.
“Hard to sleep of a night when it feels like summer.” There was no complaint in her tone, just honest appraisal of a stifling May eve.
“You can tell your great-aunt I won’t be needing breakfast.”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “Am I that sorry a cook, Colonel?”
“Hardly. I’ll be out on a scout.” He wouldn’t add that her leaving in the morning was the reason that sent him beyond fort walls. Since sign had been noted near about the Swan homeplace, he wouldn’t rest with a secondhand report.
She was studying him now—rather, his rifle, as if recognizing it for the work of art it was. Moonlight glinted off the brass inlays and mountings as the gun dangled from his hand.
“Pennsylvania made, I’d wager,” she said. “Lancaster lines. Stocked in black walnut. Smoothbore. Twenty-nine balls to the pound is my guess.”
He schooled his surprise. “Aye.”
“Pa had a cumbersome Jäger.”
“Have your own rifle?” It was a foregone conclusion, which another nod of her head confirmed. “Something tells me you’re a fine hand in a siege.”
“I’m at the wall with the men most of the time. You won’t oft find me in the cabin.”
Raised at the wall, no doubt. Buckhannon born and bred. Somehow it pained him that she had to make do with such. “Have you never left this valley?”
“Nay.”
“Ever want to?”
“Aye.” No hesitation slowed her answer. “In the worst way.”
Her delight over a small, saddle-bruised volume of poetry bespoke much. She hungered for things she hadn’t had, not all of them material. Namely the freedom to move about, to not dodge shadows. Though she was fresh as spring, she owned that same steadfast wariness that wore down both body and soul before its time. He knew because it owned him too.
He rested his rifle on the ground. “If you could leave here, where would you go?”
“Williamsburg or Philadelphia. I’ve a hankering to visit the ocean too, which I’ve only heard tell of. Something tells me you’d make a fine guide.”
“If I was to squire you, I’d take you to Philadelphia. Bradford’s booksellers and the thriving Blue Anchor tavern might suit. Or the more refined London coffeehouse.” He paused, struck by the pleasure it brought him. “You could lodge at the Indian King, the finest ordinary I know, though I prefer the Conestoga or Black Bear Inn with their wagon yards. If it was fair we’d walk along the waterfront . . .”
“You paint a pretty picture but for one thing.” She looked down at her lap. “Overmountain I’d be naught but a fish out of water, as Chaucer says.”
He grimaced and recalled his schooling, his disdain of Chaucer enduring. “If you can manage the frontier, you’d find town quite tame. Especially in a new bonnet to match that pretty petticoat.” His wink was likely lost on her in the darkness.
“Who told you about my petticoat?” Rather than acting affronted, she gave him a delighted smile. “That rascal Jasper, likely.”
Tipping his hat to her he excused himself with the deference he used in parlors. She bade him good night with a little laugh that lit up the darkness. What was it about her that made him want to tarry and tease her?
’Twas his turn at watch. If not, he might still be here come morning.
Tessa’s lingering memories of the fort and frolic, particularly Clay’s banter about her petticoat and all the talk about town, were soon swallowed up by the return home and something else far more unsettling. Their first night back, she was kept awake by more than the itch of poison ivy she’d gotten while tending the flax.
She tried to stay still, mindful of Keturah’s soft snoring on the floor beside her. Toward dawn, she woke, the pink haze of morning on the horizon, the trundle bed empty. She blinked, adjusting to the cabin’s dim lines. Had Jasper’s prediction come true? Had Keturah run off?
By the time she reached the door, her dismay was bone deep. With Indian sign along the Buckhannon of late, why had Keturah risked the door being open? Because she was now more red than white and even her thinking had altered?
As Tessa pondered it, her brothers began to stir on the other side of the log wall. If Jasper had been the one to find the door ajar, Keturah would no longer be welcome.
Raising her rifle, she pushed open the door farther with her foot, body tucked to one side of the door frame. The cabin clearing was still heavily shadowed, but nothing seemed out of place. No queer bird call or movement marred the sultry morning.
Already her shift stuck to her in places, though it fell just below her knee and would allow her to run if needs be. She waited. Watched. Stepped outside. Snuff came out from behind the woodpile, tail wagging.
Safe, then.
She lowered her gun and went in search of Keturah. A footprint in the moist dirt by the smokehouse pointed north. Through the brush she trod, unsurprised when she came into the tangled overgrowth of the abandoned Braam homestead.
Keturah was near the well, head bent like a broken flower stem. Crying—more a keening—turned the dawn eerie, the sound unlike any Tessa had ever heard as it bespoke anguish.