A good beginning.
Clay paused. Repeated the hour of their leave-taking, this time in English. Best get used to the white man’s talk if she was to live among them.
Miss Braam, if that was who she was, did not look his way again.
5
Two days the siege wore on and then the shooting sputtered to a slow stop on both sides. Sleepless, Tessa grew winded in running hot bullets in her apron to waiting guns, finally replacing a man at the wall whose elbow had been shattered by a musket ball. Sighting and firing, she ignored the thudding of a headache determined to crack her skull. A smoky haze lay about Fort Tygart, not all of it from the discharge of black powder. The Indians had set ablaze a few outlying buildings, namely the corncribs, which held the little sustenance left to them at winter’s end. Till the gardens came in, the settlers would live on game and more game till their whole being cried out for bread.
Parched, she took a long swallow from a gourd dipper and piggin that Ruth brought round.
“It’s finally dying down.” Ruth looked as beleaguered as Tessa felt. “Maybe by morning we’ll shed this place.”
If so, Fort Tygart had done its namesake proud. Not one man had fallen and only a few injured. Spirits stayed high, and a good deal of talk during the lull was about the coming of the war hero. Scraps of it returned to her now as she resumed her place at the loophole, her gaze on the still, smoky clearing.
Tall, Tygart is . . . From fine Philadelphia stock . . . English Quakers . . . Acquitted himself well in the Battle of the Wilderness by using Indian tactics, even war paint, during ambushes . . . Rescued valuable papers and a military chest containing thirty thousand pounds from the French . . . Known to shoot a man at 250 yards, the enemy fleeing like chickens before a fox . . . A devilish brave fella.
All thought of a pretty petticoat was pushed aside.
Then came the hour that wreaked the most havoc in Tessa’s spirit, the pall after the siege, that chancy hour when the newly hewn gates of the fort were cautiously opened. First a crack as they waited for a flicker of opposition, then flung treacherously wide to allow the unshaven, exhausted, bleary-eyed settlers out. The hair on the back of Tessa’s neck rose at such times, though her brothers surrounded her, some afoot and some on horseback.
She missed Jasper, the eldest, with a soul-clenching fierceness. Was he on his way back to them, laden with salt and needful things from parts east? Circling her and Ma were Ross, Lemuel, Zadock, and Cyrus, each reminding her of Pa in different ways. Jasper, possibly the most fearsome of the Swans, was sorely needed.
She tensed for a sudden commotion—outright ambush—during the league home, as wary fellow settlers sought their own outlying farms. Once at Swan Station there’d be animals to tend, the ferry to check, supper to fix. All within easy reach of a rifle. For now, the woods were downright boastful, bedecked in blossoming dogwood and redbud at every turn.
“Tessa,” Ma remarked when they broke the silence within view of their cabin, “Hester asked about you coming to the fort for a spell.”
“What for?” she asked, dismounting.
“I expect she has courting in mind. Way out here . . .” Ma left off.
The age-old concern weighed on Tessa’s spirit.
Way out here, busy from daylight to dark with nary a man in sight, what prospects have you for a husband, a family?
“I’ll scout the ferry.” Ross spoke in measured tones. “See if any more mischief’s been made along the river.”
“I’m in,” Lemuel replied, the two melting into the newly leafed brush.
“May’s a-wasting,” Zadock muttered. He was always the last for meals and worked far into the dusk, hating labor lost from Indian unrest. “Glad we weren’t gone at corn planting.” He and Cyrus moved carefully into the clearing, taking quiet account of their cabin and outbuildings, the outlying gardens and fields and fences.
Tessa betook herself to her favorite place, the springhouse. ’Twas Pa’s legacy as a stonemason, a two-story stone marvel built over a limestone spring that bubbled up in a cellar, passed out an opening in the wall through a long, deep trough, and then meandered away through the western meadow. Always cool, unmoved by arrows or buckshot or fire, the springhouse seemed a promise of peace, of better days to come despite the loopholes in its walls.
Shutting her eyes, Tessa breathed in the smell of cold water and crockery, a reminder of her need to gather splint wood for baskets, particularly yellow birch when the new sap was running. Tarry too long and the wood wouldn’t budge. She had in mind to plant a tea garden like Ma said, if Jasper remembered to bring the coveted seed. Little solaced her like harvesting and hanging bunches of herbs to sweeten the place.
Returning to the cabin, Tessa drew an easier breath. All was as they’d left it, save some critter had gotten to the abandoned corncakes on the table, a scattering of crumbs left to sweep up. These she fed to the birds outside their door, her favorites being the mourning doves beneath their west eave, cooing again in late morn.
All the while she held her breath as the steady routine of life took hold. No more rifle fire and choking smoke. No Indian cries that curdled the blood. No vexed, harried settlers obsessed with powder and bullet lead. No squalling babies and restive animals. Just quiet. Calm. Birdsong. The sigh of the wind around the cabin’s corners.
Her mind resumed its usual rhythms too, the groove worn by Keturah especially deep. She daren’t speak of it. Ma got that stricken look when she did. As if she feared the same fate would befall Tessa in time. Keturah had been dear to Ma, something of a second daughter. Her wrenching absence struck a lasting lick. Ma had even dreamed of a match between the comely Keturah and one of her sons. There’d been a bit of tomfoolery about it back then. Every one of her brothers was smitten save Ross, too young to go moon-eyed over her. But Keturah was not only lovely. She was good-hearted. Hardworking. Kind.
And then she was gone.
Tessa gathered eggs as Ma ground fresh meal in a giant mortar just beyond the front stoop. A glance outside told her Zadock and Cyrus were repairing a plow by the barn. She’d pray Lemuel and Ross home from the river.
Supper found them all at table, save Jasper, the door barred. Bedtime came early after a sleepless siege. A few unstifled yawns went around.
Zadock set down his fork. “I’ll finish plowing the flax on the morrow.”
“I’ll be on the Buckhannon,” Ross told them, always drawn to the river more than the field. “With the spring thaw, more settlers need ferrying.”
“Pass along a warning.” Zadock lit Pa’s pipe, the fragrant smoke spiraling toward the rafters in aromatic wisps. “And take care to watch your back.”
Ross simply nodded. Being the youngest, he was the most unguarded. Foolhardy, Jasper called him. Yet he was the handiest with a rifle, fixing anything from a broken stock to a blocked touchhole, his talk full of flints and jaw screws and frizzen springs. He was also a dead aim, much to the chagrin of his brothers. Pa had planned to apprentice Ross to a gunsmith, but all that went awry at his passing.
“Tessa best keep to home and away from the river lest you truly need another setting pole.” This from Cyrus, ever cautious. “That flaxseed begs to be in the ground, and I sense more rain coming.”