Embrace the Day (15 page)

"Stop that infernal weeping, Bard," he snapped. "Do you think it'll help anything?"

"B-by the Almighty, but I'm scared, Roarke," Tinsley said. "They mean to butcher us like a pair of bucks. These redskins ain't got a shred of human decency in 'em."

Roarke turned away. Tinsley was a fine one to talk of decency. Back in Harrodsburg the man had bragged incessantly about his part in the Greathouse massacre. He'd chuckled over raping a pregnant squaw and then carving the unborn child from her belly with his knife.

Firelight flickered from the center of the small camp. A few of the Indians idled near the bound prisoners, jeering in their gutteral, aspirate tongue. While Tinsley hid his face, Roarke stared at them. There were families here, he realized. Families that had undoubtedly lost members to the white man.

A woman wandered nearby. At first all Roarke could discern was a smudged face and a ragged-looking dress. Then the woman stepped back, and her face was illuminated by orange firelight. Roarke felt a faint prickle of recognition taunting his sluggish mind.

"By God almighty," he breathed, stretching out his bound hands. "Amy Parker! Amy, it's me, Roarke Adair!"

She made a small sound and shrank away, looking over her shoulder. Then she edged forward slowly, cautiously. She was about to speak when a brave barked an order and jerked her by the arm. As she was dragged away, Roarke heard a faint thud on the earth beside him.

His hands snaked out and captured the small knife Amy had dropped. He thrust it quickly between his knees to conceal it while he worked away at the leather that bound him.

Black Bear appeared with another brave who resembled him so closely that Roarke was certain the two were brothers. They laughed and chattered as they stood over the prisoners, no doubt planning a gruesome revenge for their father. Black Bear displayed a belt of scalps, dangling them in front of Roarke's face.

They reeked of dried blood. There were scalps of brown and white, and a blond one, the hair so fine it could only have been taken from a baby.

"Devils," Roarke said through gritted teeth. Then an even worse thought crossed his mind. General Henry Hamilton, the Hair Buyer, would pay for the scalps. Roarke regretted that he'd never get to Vincennes to let Hamilton know exactly what he thought of him.

There was movement among the Indians. The women and children were ordered away, and a group of eight braves, including Black Bear and his brother, clustered around the prisoners. Tinsley was taken first, probably because he was beginning to annoy the Indians with his ceaseless crying. The braves dragged him away.

Roarke was able to close his eyes to the sight of Bard's torture, but he couldn't dull his senses of hearing or smell. Tinsley's screams streaked through the air and rose heavenward to the stars of twilight. Roarke shivered to his very bones at the sound. When the smell of Tinsley's burning flesh wafted to his nostrils, Roarke felt a dreadful sickness well up in him. He worked with renewed strength at the leather thongs.

Bard Tinsley died slowly, screaming his life away as his flesh was fed, bit by bit, to the roaring campfire.

When the screams subsided, a new sound could be discerned. At first, Roarke thought it was another war party, but then he recognized the shouts and curses of his comrades.

"Shemanese!" the Indians shrieked, and scurried for their weapons. The Virginians descended like a pack of unruly wolves, snarling and slashing with knives and spitting at the Indians with pistol and rifle fire.

Roarke left off his careful sawing and, with a huge surge of strength, broke the leather thongs. He freed his ankles and leaped to his feet.

And found himself staring into Black Bear's enraged face.

The brave howled and lunged. But Calvin Greenleaf was quicker. He leaped upon Black Bear, gouging out one of the brave's eyes as he wrestled him to the ground. Grimly, Calvin crushed his knee into the brave's chest, deftly binding him with a length of rope.

Roarke's surge of strength left him as he regarded Black Bear. The youth had never had a chance to be a youth because of him. Despite the horror of his gouged eye, which was pouring blood, Black Bear bore himself magnificently as Calvin jerked him to his feet. The brave's good eye still gleamed hatred and defiance at Roarke. And, oddly, triumph.

Too late, Roarke realized why Black Bear had that look. Something more vicious than a wildcat landed on his back.

Black Bear's brother. Roarke roared with pain as a tomahawk was buried to the haft in his shoulder. Before he could recover from that horror, he felt the blood-slick steel of a knife blade at his neck. He crouched low, toppling the brave to the ground. His hand closed around Amy's knife. It slipped with amazing ease between the brave's ribs, slicing human flesh like butter.

Black Bear gave a shriek of rage when he saw his brother die. The vengeful hatred in the youth's eyes had doubled.

Indians were running everywhere, racing for cover in the dark woods. Roarke spied Amy Parker slipping away, hand in hand with a tall brave. He placed himself in front of them. The brave showed no fear, but he kept glancing toward the woods.

"Let's go," Roarke said to Amy. "Quickly, now."

Incredibly, she appeared to be torn.

"My God, Amy," Roarke said, "we can take you to safety!"

The brave tugged at her hand and muttered something.

Amy shook her head. "I'm not going, Roarke."

"But you'll be home, Amy, think of it—"

"Home? There is no home without Seth and little Ruth. I am a Shawnee now, Roarke." She glanced at the brave. "Coonahaw is my husband. And his babe stirs in my belly."

"But these people are savages, Amy! Murderers—"

She looked pointedly at the bloody knife clutched in his hand. "And you, Roarke Adair?" she asked.

Then she fled into the forest with the tall brave.

The Virginians captured seven Indians without losing a single man. There was a holiday air about the group as they made their way to the fort.

"Vincennes is ours," Will Coomes said excitedly, fairly dancing along the trail. "By Job, we pulled a mighty trick on the old Hair Buyer, we did! Got most of the town on our side like we did at Kaskaskia and convinced Hamilton that we were a thousand strong. Every one of us did the work of ten men!"

Roarke was in too much pain to celebrate with the others. He could feel the blood seeping from beneath the hastily bound bandages on his shoulder and neck. He reeled slightly, battling lightheadedness. He had to be carried into the fort.

When the men saw the Indian captives, they whooped with glee. They begged Colonel Clark to execute the braves.

Clark was no Indian killer; he never had been. But he was enraged by the scalps that adorned the captives' belts. And he knew there was a way, at last, to show Hamilton's Indian allies that the Hair Buyer was something less than their beneficent White Father. He ordered the execution to take place near the church.

There was a clamor among the men; each wanted to lay open an Indian skull in full sight of the Hair Buyer.

Through a haze of pain, Roarke gripped a railing near the main gate and watched. Black Bear was last in line. Although doubtless in pain from his damaged eye and fully aware that he was about to be killed, the youth looked as fierce as ever.

"Redskins believe it's a sacred thing," Coomes explained, "to die by an enemy's hand."

Roarke looked away. He'd done enough killing and seen enough dying for a lifetime.

The Indians filed past the church. Roarke found himself admiring Black Bear. The youth bore himself so proudly. And he was so quick when he broke from the group and lit out for the gate road.

A cry went up, but Black Bear sprinted like lightning. Only Roarke, who had been walking away from the spectacle, was near enough to stop the brave.

He didn't know whether it was lethargy or compassion that made him step aside. Black Bear looked incredulous for a split second, and then the familiar veil of hatred dropped over his face. He spoke Roarke's name like an oath, and ran for the river.

"Jesus, Roarke," Coomes said, aiming his rifle. "You let the devil get away."

Roarke moved the barrel of Will's rifle aside. "Don't," he ordered gruffly. "Let him go. I've robbed the boy of a father and a brother; I can at least let him have his life."

Coomes shook his head. "It don't pay to get all softhearted over a redskin, Roarke. You did him no favor, showing him mercy like that. The Shawnee take it as an insult. And now you've got an ungodly enemy out there who won't rest until he busts up your life like you did his."

"I doubt I'll be seeing him again."

"Injuns have long memories, Roarke. Black Bear'll carry his grudge against you to the grave, I swear it."

Roarke tried to sit up when Colonel Clark entered the cabin. Pain knifed through him at the movement.

"Lay back down, Roarke," the colonel said. "That shoulder's going to be mighty tender for a while."

"Six months is more than a while," Roarke told him darkly. Those months were missing from his life, missing in a fog of delirium. Following the surrender of Vincennes, his wounds had festered and a fever had settled in, holding him in its grip for weeks on end. The camp physician, with his leeches and regular bleeding, had weakened Roarke nearly to the point of death.

George Clark removed his hat and pulled a stool up beside the bed. "I'm sending you to Harrodsburg to recover fully," he said, keeping his keen gaze level. "And then I'm sending you home, Roarke," he added.

"I'm not all that bad off," Roarke protested.

"I can see that. You're a strong man, Roarke. A good fighter; you use your head and not your heart in battle. But our work out here's about done. The British have lost the frontier to us."

Roarke ran his tongue over his fever-dried lips. "What about Detroit?"

Clark shook his head. "We haven't the means to take it, not for a long time. I've had to divide my forces between Vincennes, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia. And there's a fort to be built at the Falls of the Ohio."

"Sounds like you'll need men," Roarke said, moving restlessly on his cot. He tried to sit up again, and was rewarded by a blinding flash of pain.

Again, Clark moved his head slowly from side to side. "You've fought your battles, Roarke, and fought them well. I couldn't ask for a better soldier than you. But it's time for you to go home." Clark held up his hand to forestall a protest. "You're no murderer, Roarke. You're too good a man to be killing redskins year after year."

"But I've done it," Roarke said darkly. "For nearly three years, I've done it."

Clarke nodded. "Aye. 'Tis a funny thing, this business of killing. With each life you take, you lose a little of yourself. That's why Bard Tinsley was the way he was in the end. Nothing but a hollow shell of fear and hatred."

Roarke agreed silently. Tinsley had lived like an animal. He'd died like an animal, too, at the hands of his prey.

"You've given more than any one man should have to give," the colonel continued. "I'd say you earned a trip home. Just like you earned a grant of land in Kentucky, should you ever care to claim it."

Roarke swallowed. "Are you sure—"

Clark grinned and held out a flask of grog. "Go home, Roarke Adair," he said. "Go home, and farm the land like you were meant to do."

The hooded wall
clock struck four, and Gene sighed, aware that she had hours of work ahead of her. She pushed her spectacles back up on her nose and applied her quill determinedly to the ledger book she was working in. Lord, she thought, let 1781 be a good year for me. Let there be enough money this year… enough for the farm, and enough to get Henry Piggot off my back once and for all.

She worked and reworked the column of figures. But any way she added it, the result was the same. Her profit margin was too slim to free her of debt.

She slammed the book shut with a thud. A long silence ensued, punctuated at regular intervals by the clock's ticking. Normally, the sounds of the Greenleaf family filled the air, but this was Sunday. Every Sunday the family made a pilgrimage to Scott's Landing, where they attended services at a slave church.

Genevieve hated Sundays. She'd been invited more than once to go to meeting in town, but always she demurred. Despite the openness of the people of Dancer's Meadow, she still felt like an outsider. And so she kept to her house, busy-ing herself with endless tasks, trying not to acknowledge the pervasive, bleak loneliness that enveloped her every time she paused to think.

"There're worse things in life than being lonely," she grumbled to the cat, who was sunbathing beneath the window.

But at the moment she couldn't think of anything worse. The clock's ticking seemed weighty today, pressing on her, nearly driving her to distraction. When an odd clanking sound drifted in through the window, Genevieve welcomed the interruption.

But caution had been schooled into her by the six years of the war, especially after British raiders had made their presence felt in Albemarle County. Automatically, her hand strayed to the Pennsylvania rifle hanging by the door, to see that the weapon was primed and loaded.

She walked out on the porch. The clanking grew louder, and then a mounted figure appeared below, on the river road. Genevieve had an impulse to step back inside and bolt the door. These days the area was rife with deserters—British, Hessian, and Continental—who would kill for less than a good meal.

The man raised a hand, and the brim of his hat lifted. Genevieve clutched at the door frame, not daring to believe her eyes. She'd seen that face so many times in her secret dreams that she thought she was dreaming now.

But the man rode closer, and the clanking of his weapons and utensils grew louder, and she knew he was real.

"
Roarke
!" That yell, bursting with joy, didn't even sound like her own voice.

She tumbled from the porch at breakneck speed, running out into the sunlight, calling his name again and again like a song.

But Genevieve stopped at the end of the yard, suddenly unable to go on. The years on the frontier had changed Roarke. His fringed hunting shirt and leggings garbed a figure that was much leaner than she remembered, and he and his mount were so laden with gear that every movement created noise. He sported a full, coarse beard that was a deeper red than the unevenly cropped flame-colored hair that peeped from beneath a wide-brimmed Kentucky hat.

He was a stranger, grizzled and unkempt, as raw as the frontier itself. Genevieve realized she was a little afraid of him.

But the smile he gave her as he dropped from his horse was so sweet, so heartachingly familiar, that Genevieve felt something inside her melt. She took a hesitant step, and then an old hidden longing propelled her into his outspread arms. He swung her about and buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply. Genevieve laughed and cried and gloried in the strength of his arms and listened in awe as he murmured her name in a voice rough with emotion.

Finally, he set her down and cupped her face in his hands, a smile dancing in his blue eyes.

"I've not the words to say how much I've missed you these four years, Gennie."

"Have you, Roarke Adair?"

"More than I can say."

Her heart filled with a feeling so warm that she caught her breath. She looked away so he wouldn't see the emotion welling in her eyes.

"Have you been to your farm yet?"

He shook his head. "I rode in from the north. I'm on my way there now."

She walked him back to his horse and watched him mount, feeling awkward. There was so much she wanted to say to Roarke, yet so little came to mind. "Hance has grown into a fine boy," she commented at last.

"I've lost so much time with the lad. He won't even know me."

"You'll make it up to him, Roarke."

"I just hope I can."

Secretly, Genevieve hoped so, too. Hance needed a father badly. He was indeed a fine boy, as she'd said, arrestingly handsome, with Prudence's pale-blond hair and china-blue eyes, and he was thriving on the bounty of Virginia's land. But something about the youngster disturbed Genevieve. Hance had a streak of wildness in him that went beyond boyish mischief. He was willful and demanding, occasionally even cruel. But Genevieve wouldn't tell Roarke this. It was up to him to assess the boy's character.

Roarke paused before turning his horse.

"Gennie?"

That name, spoken in his deep voice, never failed to stir her. She looked up at him inquiringly.

"I'll be back. Will you see me tomorrow?"

She smiled at him. "You never have to ask that, Roarke. Of course I'll see you. In fact, I insist on it." Her eyes moved over the long scar that issued from his collar and wound up toward his jaw line. "I want you to tell me what sort of man the frontier has made you. And I want to know whether or not you think you've won your war."

"Are you really my pa?"

Roarke set aside his shaving blade and brushed away the last strands of his beard, rubbing his hand over the newly exposed flesh. God, but it felt good to be clean again, to be home. He grinned and swung the little boy up into his lap. "That I am, son. You don't remember me, do you?"

Hance shook his bright head solemnly.

"I was off in Kentucky, fighting Indians."

The lad brightened. "Did you kill a lot of them?"

"Only when I had to, son."

"What were they like, Papa? Were they like Mimi, and Mr. Quaid's wife?"

Roarke smiled to hear Hance call him Papa, forcing away the savage images that the thought of Indians recalled to him. "They were different. They dressed in animal skins and beads and feathers. In summer they wore almost nothing at all. But they're people, Hance, just like us. The children play with dolls and cry when they fall down and scrape their elbow. They grieve when something bad happens."

A memory stabbed at him: Black Bear, screaming his name like a battle cry.

"Why were you fighting them?" Hance inquired, looking curiously at Roarke's pensive expression.

"Because they sided with the redcoats."

"Did you win the fight?"

Roarke frowned, remembering Colonel Clark's confidence at their last parting. "I think so, son."

Hance began fingering the straps of Roarke's saddlebag. "Did you bring me something?"

Roarke smiled. "There wasn't much to be had in the wilderness." He reached into the bag and took out a geode bowl. "The Indians eat from this," he explained. He handed the crystal-lined bowl to Hance and watched the boy's eyes grow wide with appreciation.

Then Roarke drew out some other gifts—a bear-claw necklace, quill work, a handful of polished agates. "These are for the Greenleafs."

Hance dropped the bowl and grabbed at the bear-claw necklace. "Mine!" he said loudly. "I want them all."

Roarke knew that this sort of possessiveness was normal in children Hance's age. He also knew better than to give in to it. "Sorry, lad," he said mildly. "One for each of you. Tomorrow we'll go over to the Greenleafs, and you can help me give out the presents."

But Hance leaped from his lap, clutching the saddlebag. "No!" he shouted, stamping his foot. "Mine!"

Roarke stood up. "Hance, please."

The boy was furious now. "The Greenleafs aren't your sons—I am! And I can do anything I want with the presents."

He hurled the necklace into the fireplace with all the fury of his boyish indignation. The string broke and the claws scattered over the hearthstones.

"It was mine," Hance mumbled.

Roarke clenched his jaw, though he was careful to betray neither anger nor surprise at Hance's outburst. He bent and retrieved the necklace.

"Since you broke Phillip's necklace," he explained calmly, "I'll have to give him your bowl."

"No!" Hance screamed. He whirled on Roarke, his face dark red with fury. "I hate you! Why did you have to come back anyway!" Hance leaped for the geode bowl.

But Roarke held him off. "I'm giving this to Phillip, Hance. And if I find you trying to take it from him, I'll do to you what I probably should have done a few minutes ago. I'll take you across my knee. Now, why don't you pick up those bear-claws, and we'll see if we can get them back on the string?"

"No." Hance turned away sulkily. As he left the room, Roarke heard the boy mutter, "Mine," under his breath. This time, Roarke ignored it. He'd give Hance time to get used to his being back. But not much time. Roarke had already figured out that the boy would require more than a little training.

The hogsheads rolled down the river road at a lumbering pace, stirring up red-brown dust as the Greenleaf boys guided them to the wharf. Genevieve basked in a glow of pride; it was their best crop yet. A few of the townspeople milled about, admiring the yield, shaking their heads with the wonder of it.

"They still can't get over you," Roarke said, grinning down at Genevieve. "A few years ago no one would have believed that a woman and an ex-slave could raise so much as a turnip between them."

As they were laughing together, Nell Wingfield sidled by, sporting a new hat of outrageous proportions.

" 'Tis a tidy bit of tobacco there, Genevieve," she said. "Henry will be most pleased."

Genevieve's face clouded. Henry Piggot would indeed be happy to learn of her farm's bounty. He'd been absent for the duration of the war, but she didn't doubt that Nell kept him informed of things in Dancer's Meadow. The constant dread of his arrival weighed on her mind.

Hance, riding high on his father's shoulders, plucked a paste grape from Nell's hat.

"Lookee there, Papa," he chortled. "It's not real! I wondered why the birds stayed away from her."

"Give that back, you little urchin!" Nell huffed, grabbing for the bit of fruit.

"No," Hance said merrily, slipping to the ground with youthful agility. "You've got enough fruit on your ugly old hat."

"Hance…" Roarke strode off in pursuit, concealing a grin of amusement.

Nell glowered after him. "Impertinent child," she sniffed. "He could use a good whipping. I'm surprised a man like Roarke would tolerate such manners." She narrowed her eyes at Hance. Roarke had reached him and was extracting the paste grape from his hand. "But then," Nell continued, "we can't hold Roarke responsible for the boy's nature, can we?"

Genevieve shot her a warning glance. "Don't speak of it, Nell. Don't ever speak of it. If you do, I swear, I'll make you sorry."

Hance landed a kick on Roarke's shin and ran down to the river, howling like an Indian.