Clay was studying the far shore from which they’d embarked, eye on what Pa had called the River King. It was a towering, fully leafed hardwood, lightning struck at the center but still standing strong.
“Ever consider building a rifle platform in that silver maple?”
Ross and Tessa stared at him.
“Ponder it,” he added, handing back her pole. “Might make a fine lookout with so much sign reported.”
He led his horse up the sandy bank, then swung himself in the saddle. With a fare-thee-well, they poled back across the Buckhannon, the west wind hastening them.
“Pa never saw a need for such,” Ross said in wonderment as they bumped up to the shore.
“And Pa got himself killed,” she replied.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent awaiting the expected party that never materialized, fishing, and pondering the treed platform. Ross even shimmied up the giant maple to determine a suitable height. Soon she was peering up the soaring trunk to see the worn soles of his shoes dangling.
“You all right?” she called.
“Speechless is what I am. Up here you can see clear to Fort Tygart.”
“I’m not much concerned about that,” she answered, setting her jaw against the poison itch now at her back. “The colonel keeps harping about sign. Any of that to be had from up there?”
Silence. And then, as if the wind had knocked him from his perch, there was a soul-shaking rustle as Ross came crashing down through the branches in a flurry of torn leaves and twigs. Breathless, he landed with ankle-bruising force, nearly toppling her.
“The colonel ain’t wrong.” Winded, face stricken, he began backing up the riverbank toward the trail to home. “There’s half a dozen redmen or better at the falls.”
Perilously close. Breath snatched, heart in her throat, Tessa followed him. They were no longer walking but running, she herself hardly slowed by her ten-pound rifle. The fat crappie they’d caught for supper stayed on the bank.
14
They burst into the Swan clearing, alerting Zadock stacking wood and Jasper corralled with the horses. In one agile leap, Ross jumped atop the nearest mount and dashed north to sound an alarm.
Tessa looked about wildly. “Where’s Cyrus?”
“Gone hunting,” Jasper replied as coolly as if she’d merely warned of wasps.
Soon all were barred inside the cabin save Ross and Cyrus. Cyrus’s fondness for turkey, the deafening shot that brought one down, might spell the end of him.
And Clay? Tessa paced by the hearth, the sound of guns being readied and positions taken in the adjoining blockhouse raking her nerves. Clay was out there somewhere. Lord, hedge him in.
Just as she’d heeded Ma’s advice and settled on a chair, a terrific roar tore through the cabin. She started, staunching the urge to throw her apron over her head like she’d done in childhood. The very cabin seemed to shake.
Who had shot—and why?
In its aftermath came a dreadful silence before a resonant halloo in the clearing.
Clay?
Her very bones seemed to melt, an odd comingling of joy and stark relief. She rose from her seat and went to peer out a loophole. Clay was at the edge of the north woods, bare chested, his linen hunting shirt suspended like a flag of truce from his upraised rifle. Fury—and fear—soared.
“Hold your fire, you blatherskate!” She hurled the words at whichever brother had misfired behind the blockhouse wall. ’Twas one of Pa’s Scots terms, reserved for the most heated moments.
She rushed to the door and unbarred it, the seconds till Clay reached the cabin stretching taut. He brushed past her, the earthy scent of pennyroyal riding the air. Ma and Keturah regarded him with deep concern as they stood by the hearth.
Tessa took in the whole of him in one grateful glance, beginning with his sodden buckskins now as black as the hair plastered to his blessedly intact skull. Never mind the indecency of wearing no shirt. Ma took the dripping garment from his rifle tip and hung it from a peg to dry while he looked out the loophole Tessa had forsaken, rifle ready.
It grew eerily still. Too still. The closed-up cabin felt like a bake oven. Only the Lord knew how long they’d be cooped up together. No doubt Clay had come across the same Indians Ross had seen from his lofty seat. Had he abandoned his horse? Likely he and the stallion had swum the river, as the ferry hadn’t been waiting. Maybe the Indians would pass them by.
Supper waited on the table, a savory kettle of stew and a stack of corncakes a foot high. The fare grew cold, all appetites lost.
Clay reached for his still soggy shirt. Pulling it on, his arms overhead and head hidden, he was a riveting sight. Tessa tried not to gape. Hester would be scandalized. ’Twas a moment meant for a wife maybe, intimate and unguarded. But her close scrutiny gained her something else besides.
In the shuttered, barred cabin, where the day’s dying light crept through an occasional crack, she saw blood pooling beneath his moccasin. Confounded, she went to him and knelt, reaching out a hand to examine his leg in a way that made Ma gasp.
“You got hit,” Tessa said, calling for rags in the next breath.
But how badly? And by whom?
“Hope it wasn’t you,” he teased beneath his breath.
“Not I. One of my blatherskate brothers.”
“Blatherskate? From the Scots song ‘Maggie Lauder.’” He chuckled. “His aim’s off, so it’s nothing to fret about. I’ve had worse.”
The flesh below the knee was torn, warm, and bleeding in a way that made her stomach sink. His buckskin breeches were ruined, but better them than his leg.
When Ma brought warm water, Tessa cleaned the wound, grateful for the shadows even though they made her task tricky. She prayed for a clean mending and no infection. Ma hovered, neither of them paying much mind to Keturah’s exchange in Lenape with Clay.
Keturah crossed the cabin to the corner she shared with Tessa and returned with a highly ornamented buckskin pouch. They watched as she mixed water and a white powder from her stores to form a poultice.
“Buck brush and yarrow,” Clay told them, answering their unspoken questions. “A cure-all for many ailments, especially wounds.”
Expertly Keturah applied the paste before finishing what Tessa had started and binding his leg with clean cloth.
“She’s a kikehwèt,” he said, eyes on Tessa. “A healer.”
Tessa repeated the odd word, noting Keturah’s face light up when she echoed it without stumbling.
“You ought to let her treat you too,” he finished with a lingering look at her reddened forearms. “The Lenape are known for their curative powers no matter how savage some think them.”
Preoccupied with him, she’d forgotten herself, yet at the mention her inflamed skin began itching anew.
“An oatmeal poultice usually cures poison vine,” Ma said.
“Mayhap it’s not poison vine,” Clay replied, switching to Lenape and looking at Keturah again.
Their unintelligible exchange made Tessa feel fenced out. Apart. And left her wishing herself away from the cabin, even in the chancy woods.
Keturah said a few words and Clay translated, “Jewelweed.” He looked at Tessa. “Want me to get some? You look right miserable.”
“You’d go out that door again? With your leg like it is?”