“Wherever you hear the ring of an axe you’ll find it so.” Could they hear the lament in his voice? “But there are still deer and bear aplenty. And panthers are just as much a danger as the wolves.”
The dining room doors were being opened, a long table a-glitter with candlelight. Offering each lady an arm, Clay started a slow walk across the carpeted floor, aware of too many appraising glances. His senses, honed sharp by his past, provided ongoing entertainment. He took note of the beauty patch, big as a tick, on the chin of the mayor’s wife. The missing gilt button on one gentleman’s waistcoat. A servant’s bruised eye and tarnished buckle. The failed soufflé at supper.
While tolerating some aspects of civilization, others he embraced. An overburdened table was one of them, laden with Philadelphia’s beef and pork pies and hearty northern fare. Many a winter he’d scraped by on wild game and roots. The ravenous frontier was as much a force to be reckoned with as the treacherous frontier.
Soon he’d be three hundred miles to westernmost Virginia and Pennsylvania’s borders, with a tattered, winter-weakened militia in dire need of powder, mustering, and more, and the back settlers, as they were called, in need of defense.
As he took his place around the elegant table, he pondered all he hadn’t said in his honest speech about British America’s embattled borders. Best save that for a more hardened audience.
Packhorses and provisions. Indian trade goods. Powder. Bullet lead. Rifle pouch. Flint and steel. Salt. Clay surveyed the growing heap and the pawing horseflesh before him. The journey out was always more comfortable than the journey back. For now, he familiarized himself with his stores, gotten from a list he’d made that would be paid and supplied by the colonial treasury.
He had no need of a guide as so many did—those who were unfamiliar with the backwoods and the deer or buffalo paths connecting stations and settlements. Seasoned bordermen knew to avoid the treacherous Indian trails that ran the depth and breadth of the frontier, spiderwebbing in every direction.
“We’re going to ride to Pitt in fine style.” The jovial voice cut into Clay’s musings as his longtime partner descended the mercantile steps. A man who, if pressed, could likely outwit him and every other borderman Clay knew.
Jude Early looked at the line of horses and provisions that needed loading, then cast a baleful glance at the spring sky as the Quaker merchant appeared behind him, list in hand. “Think we’ll clear Philadelphia by the forenoon?”
“If we cut to the chase,” Clay replied, settling a packsaddle into place.
He’d thanked his host, bade farewell to his city kin, and prepared himself mentally for what lay ahead. Barring mishaps, he reckoned on seeing Fort Tygart by May. The backcountry, that region of particular concern to the king and colonial government, would be aflame with Indian raids after a long, white winter.
Lord willing, he and Jude and Maddie would reach Fort Pitt first, then drop down some hundred miles to the war-torn Monongahela country. There his unseen, picketed namesake stood on an overlook above the Buckhannon River, smack in the middle of what he himself considered the ring of fire that was western Pennsylvania, northwestern Virginia, and the Ohio.
“Colonel Tygart . . .”
He stilled, catching Jude’s bemused expression before the genteel voice turned him around. All thoughts of the journey ahead vanished.
“Miss Penrose.” Of all the women who’d graced his host’s parlor, she was, like the Monongahela, most memorable. Not that he’d tarried on that fact.
“Pardon the surprise, but you left the other night before I could bid you goodbye.” Her smile was coy beneath her wide-brimmed, beribboned hat. In her mitted hands she held a folded paper. When his gaze landed on it, she held it out to him.
Full of the wilderness as he was, he easily caught the fragrance of some cultivated scent he couldn’t name. Lavender?
“I’m hoping we can keep a correspondence. You are a man of letters, and I . . .” She paused, the intensity of her green gaze not lost on him. “I am not impartial to the post.”
“Obliged.” He stifled a rueful smile, the fragrant letter betwixt his callused, dirt-brown fingers. “But lest you wait too long for a reply, a reliable post is yet to be had where I’m headed.”
“How many months will you be away?”
His shoulders lifted in a slow shrug. He rarely talked details and dates. The wilderness wouldn’t let him. “As the good book says, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live, and do this, or that.’”
“Are you a Scripture-abiding man, Colonel Tygart?”
“I purpose to be.” The half-truth stung, but she gave him a smile nonetheless.
“I shall pray for you then, in the hope that we shall meet again.”
He gave a noncommittal nod, loosening the subtle cord she’d attempted to tie him with.
“Godspeed, Colonel Tygart.” She turned away with her maid and swept down the cobbled street, skirts trailing.
The shop merchant stood on the top step and guffawed, having surveyed the exchange with no small amusement. “Are the flowers of the frontier so much fairer than our city sirens, gentlemen?”
“Best ask Colonel Tygart, sir.” Jude’s grin widened, a flash of brilliant white in his dark face. “Seems like he attracts attention where’er he goes, even in buckskins.”
“Oh?” Kneeling, Clay resumed checking and tying and buckling. “I’ve been too preoccupied with staying alive to notice.”
“Truth.” Jude ran a hand down a packhorse’s withers. “Besides, there’s precious few frontier flowers beyond the mountains, and too many menfolk.”
“Glad I am of the comforts of the city then.” With another cackle, the merchant stepped aside as Jude’s wife stepped out the mercantile door, arms overflowing.
Jude gave a good-natured groan as Maddie approached, pleasant determination on her face. But Clay felt a warmth and appreciation for any feminine graces she brought to the grit of the trail. Maddie was, in her own way, as necessary as Jude. Owned by an English officer who’d fallen during Braddock’s defeat, they’d aligned themselves with Clay soon after. Maddie had been a laundress, Jude a hostler. When Clay had almost died from a case of fever, Maddie had nursed him back to health. In turn, he’d saved her and Jude from a deadly ambush. Together they’d returned to eastern Pennsylvania with the tattered army, having formed a lasting if unusual friendship.
“Looks like you raided the shop, all right. Anything left?” Jude took an accounting as she began tucking things into saddlebags. “Thread. Scissors. Hairbrush and dressing glasses. Tea leaves. Loaf sugar.” He lowered his voice discreetly. “Ribbon garters. Petticoat. Hooper’s Female Pills.” He opened a small sack. “Candied . . . ginger?”
Maddie smiled patiently. “Husband, don’t you want something else to chew on besides that foul tobacco?”
With a chuckle, Jude returned to his own packing.
“Saved this one just for you.” Clay gestured to a well-fed mount, a young mare that nickered softly as Maddie approached.
Maddie thanked him, her pleasure plain. Despite her frontier garb and manly felt hat, she was decidedly feminine. Childless, she and Jude preferred the wilds just as Clay did but for far different reasons. Clay didn’t have the worry of slave catchers on the prowl for freed blacks to seize and then sell into captivity. At least on the frontier, dodgy as it was, they owned their personal freedom.