He strode out of the house, heading for the barn where they’d left their horses. Silvia wasn’t a good rider, and even if she’d managed to saddle and bridle her horse alone, she wouldn’t have got far.
He’d heard the random bangs of pistol fire, but hadn’t paid attention. His mother hailed him, though, and he saw that she and the Sachem had had their contest: a grubby handkerchief was pinned to a huge, bare oak, perforated with singed and blackened holes.
Jenny was flushed from the cold, and her cap had come off when she threw back the hood of her cloak. She was groping behind her head in search of it, and laughing at something the Sachem had said to her, and despite her silver-gray hair, Ian, rather startled, thought she looked like a girl.
“Okwaho, iahtahtehkonah,” the Sachem said, seeing Ian. He smiled broadly, looking at Jenny. “Your mother is deadly.”
“If ye mean with a pistol, I expect so,” Ian replied, slightly squint-eyed. “She’s no bad wi’ a hatpin, either—should anyone give her cause.”
The Sachem laughed, and while Jenny didn’t, she sniffed in a way that indicated amusement. She arched a brow at Ian, turned—and then turned back, having seen something in his face.
“What’s happened?” she said, her own face changing in an instant.
He told them, briefly. It occurred to him that the old Sachem was not only Thayendanegea’s uncle but plainly had influence with him.
The Sachem didn’t interrupt or ask questions, and preserved an attitude of respectful attention, but Ian thought he found the account entertaining. As he brought the story to an end, though, it occurred to him also that the Sachem very likely knew Gabriel Hardman well and might feel loyalty toward him.
His mother had been thoughtfully cleaning her pistol while he spoke, ramming a cloth down the barrel with its tiny ramrod. Now she put the pistol back in her belt, folded the stained cloth, and tucked it into the cartridge box.
“We had a wager, did we not?” she asked the Sachem. He rocked back a little on his heels, a smile still lurking in the corners of his mouth.
“We did.”
“And ye admit that I won, I suppose. You bein’ an honest man?”
The smile grew plain.
“I cannot say otherwise. What forfeit do you demand?”
Jenny nodded in the direction of the house. “That you go with my friend Silvia, to talk with Mr. Brant. And that you see justice done,” she added, in the manner of an afterthought.
“You didn’t win by that much,” the Sachem said, with mild reproach. “But since she’s your friend, clearly you will go with her wherever she goes. And as you are also my friend—are you?” he interrupted himself, lifting one white brow.
“If it’ll make ye go with her, aye,” Jenny said impatiently.
“I will go with you,” the Sachem said, bowing. “Wherever you wish to go.”
THIS EXCHANGE DISTURBED Ian, but he hadn’t time to do more than give the Sachem a brief “trouble my mother and I’ll gut ye like a fish” look on his way to the barn. His mother caught the look and appeared to think it funny, though the Sachem kept a decently straight face.
Silvia was indeed in the barn, with the skewbald gelding named Henry that she’d ridden from Philadelphia, leaning against his warm bulk, face buried in her arms, as he calmly plucked mouthfuls of hay from a hanging net and chewed with a comforting, slobbery sound. The horse’s saddle and bridle lay on the ground at her feet.
Silvia looked up at the sound of Ian’s footsteps. Her face was blotched with weeping, her cap askew, and her limp brown hair uncoiled on one side and hanging down beside her ear, but she bent at once to seize the bridle from the ground at her feet.
“I was—was waiting—he was eating, I couldn’t bridle him while—” She gestured helplessly at Henry’s tack and the slowly champing jaws.
“And where d’ye intend going?” Ian asked politely, though that was clear enough. The question focused Silvia’s mind, though, and she drew herself upright, eyes bleared but fierce.
“To get my girls and take them away. Will thee help me?”
“And go where, lass?” Ian reached for the bridle, but she clung to it, desperate.
“Away!” she said. “It doesn’t matter, I’ll find a place!”
“Rachel said ye thought of taking the matter to Thayendanegea.”
“I did, yes. I was trying to decide,” she said, placing a hand on the horse’s neck. “Whether to wait for his return and ask for his judgment between me and Gabriel—or ride to the inn, fetch the girls, and run.” She was breathing like a runaway horse herself, and now stopped to mop her face and swallow. “If I waited—Gabriel might get help to pursue us, and should he catch us … I—I doubt I could prevent his taking the girls from me. And … what if Brant should take Gabriel’s side?” A belated thought struck her.
“Do the Mohawk believe that children are the property of the father?”
“No,” Ian said calmly. “If a woman puts her husband out of her house, or he leaves, her bairns stay with her.”
“Oh.” She sat down suddenly on the saddle and raised a trembling hand to tuck back the dangling hair. “Oh. Then perhaps …?”
“Perhaps it’s no Thayendanegea’s business,” Ian said matter-of-factly. “What goes on between a man and his wife is … what goes on between a man and his wife, unless it’s causin’ a stramash that bothers other folk. I mean, if ye shot your husband, that might cause a bit of a nuisance, but I dinna suppose ye mean to do that, bein’ a Friend and all.”
“Oh,” she said again. She sat for a bit, staring at the hay-strewn ground between her feet, and he let her sit.
“I should like to shoot Gabriel,” she said, and stared some more, her lips pressed tight together. Then she shook her head and got unsteadily to her feet. “But thee is right. I won’t.”
She drew a deep breath and reached for the bridle in his hand.
“But I must have my girls with me now. Will thee help me to go and get them?”
The light was fading fast and a wind with the cold breath of night came into the barn and stirred the scattered bits of straw along the packed-dirt floor. Ian merely nodded and bent to heave the saddle up.
“Go and fetch your cloak, lass. Ye’ll freeze, else.”
IT WAS LESS than an hour’s ride to the inn, but the sun had gone down, swallowed in a sudden bank of cloud that rose up from the trees like black bread rising. It began to snow.
Ian had put Silvia up before him, saying that she might become tangled in the rope leading their second horse. So much was true. It was more true that while she was no longer starved, she was still thin as an icicle and just as brittle, and he felt an urgent need to shelter her.
The wind had dropped, thank God, but the snow fell thick and silent, muting all sound and burdening the branches of the pines and fir trees. It was a good road, but he still pushed Henry a little, lest it disappear under the horse’s hooves. This wasn’t his country, and he didn’t want to go astray and end up spending the night in the woods with Silvia.
“I met Gabriel in Philadelphia,” she said, unexpectedly. “My parents were still alive then, and we belonged to the same meeting. They’d chosen someone else for me—a blacksmith who owned his own forge. Older than I by ten years, well established. A kind man,” she added after a pause. “With a house and property. Gabriel was a clerk, my own age, and earned barely enough to keep himself, let alone a wife.”