Maddie offered a wide smile. “After time on the trail, I’m just glad for a fork and a chair.”
Semple’s did not disappoint. Venison collops and fried catfish aplenty, even mincemeat pie. Dishes were passed even after Clay pushed his plate away.
Jude took an eager bite of pie. Stopped chewing. Tried to swallow. “That crust wouldn’t break beneath a wagon wheel.”
Bypassing the pie, Clay tasted the bracing coffee. Black as hades but nothing to complain about.
“I heard tell Colonel Washington likes to lodge at Semple’s when he’s here,” Maddie said, stirring cream into her cup. “And that the best rooms are reserved for him, some secret bower the rest of us plain folk never see.”
“He’s one officer I wouldn’t mind crossing paths with again. I ain’t seen Wash since Braddock’s defeat in ’55.” Jude took another stab at the pie. “He’s got some powerful medicine taking four bullets through his coat and two horses shot from under him and living to tell the tale.”
Clay pondered Washington’s miraculous escape till the commotion in the tavern foyer stole his attention. Unruly dogs barked outside while a burly man in an Indian blanket stood at the dining room’s entrance, gaze settling on Clay.
Alexander McKee, Fort Pitt’s Indian agent.
With a slight limp, McKee made his way to their table, shook hands, and took a seat. A harried serving girl brought him coffee, then refilled Clay’s own cup.
“I’ve been looking for you, Tygart.” McKee drank half the brew in two swallows, hot as it was. “You’re headed for the Buckhannon settlement, Edmonstone tells me. Still aim to leave out soon as you’re provisioned?”
“Day after tomorrow, likely.”
McKee said nothing for a full minute. In the time he’d been an Indian agent, he’d absorbed some of their reflective, taciturn ways. “A fortnight ago, a prisoner exchange took place. The Lenape surrendered a young woman thought to be from the Buckhannon River country.”
Clay remained as stoic as McKee. “Her name?”
“We don’t know for certain. She won’t speak. One of the men who served in the Buckhannon militia remembers her. Said she’s daughter to a Dutch family by the name of Braam who was raided a few years back.”
“And you want me to return her to her kin.”
“If there’s any left, aye.”
Clay mulled this latest development, making no promises. Former captives were fraught with complications. Some were glad to return to their white families. Others balked. Which would Miss Braam be? And if she didn’t talk . . .
“Might be a good time to travel with another woman along.” Maddie’s voice was quiet. Thoughtful.
Clay rubbed his whiskered jaw. “Best make her acquaintance first.”
“She’s no trouble,” McKee said gruffly. “Keeps to herself mostly. Partial to sewing and beadwork. But quite frankly, I’m concerned for her safety.”
Clay eyed him with intensity till he explained himself.
“She draws too much notice. Some of the men even ask for extra guard duty just so they can be near her. I’ve never seen a woman so . . .” He paused, searching for the right word, clearly flummoxed. “Womanly.”
Maddie smiled. Jude chuckled. Clay tried to gauge just what that meant. McKee was not given to praise or overstatement. Simply put, the returned captive was pretty enough she put herself at risk. Fort Pitt was overrun with soldiers, traders, drunkards, even criminals. Given time, someone would break into the blockhouse or accost her on the street. McKee wanted her gone.
“I’ve seen a lot of women, Indian and white, French and British and half bloods. She’s an uncommon one,” McKee concluded.
Jude rubbed his furrowed brow. “Why you reckon she don’t speak? Been gone so long she forgot her mother tongue?”
McKee finished his coffee and stood. “Mayhap she doesn’t want to remember.”
The next forenoon, Clay and Maddie trudged through a steady spring rain with its accompanying ankle-deep mud to Fort Pitt’s westernmost blockhouse. An armed sentry stood guard at the blockhouse’s massive door.
“We’re here to see the returned captive,” Clay said.
With a nod, the sentry thrust the door open. Clay and Maddie stepped into a shadowed interior lit by lantern light. His gaze fell on a figure sitting on an Indian blanket along one far wall. Shoulders slightly bent, the young woman did not look up, engrossed in the beadwork trailing across her lap and in her hands. Her world seemed to extend no farther than her trade blanket.
Maddie hung back as Clay moved forward. Taking a cue from the former captive, he lowered himself to the floor just beyond one woolen edge. Only then did she look up. And in that fleeting, lantern-lit instant, Clay understood the Indian agent’s concern.
Flawless.
Mesmerizing azure eyes. Braids of woven white-gold. Bone structure a bewitching blend of lofty lines and pleasing angles, lips full and unsmiling. Even seated, he could tell she was tall and lithe. Yet bosomy and narrow-waisted. And dressed as a Lenape down to the thunderbird and tortoise design on her moccasins. On each high cheekbone was a dot of red paint gotten from the bloodroot plant. Her parted hairline bore a telltale red streak.
He swallowed past his astonishment and gave the customary Lenape greeting. “Hè, kulamàlsi hàch?”
She looked away from him, and he sensed her surprise though she did not show it. And then her attention returned to her handwork. Nary a word did she speak.
Reaching out, he took a cluster of wampum beads in hand. He’d always been partial to purple. Small baskets were scattered around her, each holding the decorative items the Indians were so fond of. Dyed quills. Glass beads. Small, metal tinkling cones. Bright ribbon. Trade silver. Feathers. Even a small pot of vermillion, the prized color of every tribe. How long had she been with the Lenape? The artistry of her handwork bespoke years.
He continued quietly in Lenape. “Tomorrow when the sun is two fingers high we will follow the Monongahela south to the back settlements. Just you, me, the woman you see behind me, and a man named Jude. You’ll ride a mare with your belongings. My intent is to return you to your white kin.”
Her slender hands stilled.
“The Indian agent here believes you are called Miss Braam. Your people settled along the Buckhannon River in western Virginia prior to the raid that took you away from them years ago. If you know different, you need to tell me, else we’ll begin a fruitless chase.”
Her lips parted. Would she speak? A voice seemed the very soul of a person. Much could be had by its pitch and tone, its peculiar resonance. Like a moccasin print, no two alike, a voice was one’s own unique possession. And if it was as fetching as all the rest of her . . .
He released the wampum he held, the beads making a faint tinkling sound. His last look at her before he pulled himself to his feet left him gut-wrenched.
A single tear slid down her pale cheek, trailing to her jawline, then falling to a dark splotch on the coarse weave of her blue duffel skirt.
All at once, Maddie was beside him, holding out a brightly dyed Philadelphia handkerchief. But would the woman take it? Lashes lowered, she reached out gracefully, even gratefully, and accepted the offering.