Judith E. French (29 page)

Cailin stopped and looked up at him. “Isn’t Forrest Wescott her son?”

“She was wed to a Shawnee warrior, years ago, before she met and married Robert Wescott, Lord Kentington. He was the Viscount Brandon when they wed; that’s why she calls him Brandon. He later inherited his father’s title when the old earl died. Kitate is the son of your sister’s Shawnee marriage. Robert Wescott took Moonfeather away to England, and Kitate’s never really forgiven Robert or the English. He’s Shawnee through and through, but he’s devoted to his mother. If anyone can get her home, he will.”

“Kitate is Cameron’s grandson then.”

“And your nephew,” he said.

She shook her head. “You knew all along that she was my sister, didn’t ye?”

“Once I saw Cameron, I knew. Moonfeather’s story is common knowledge among the Shawnee.”

“You never told me about her necklace.”

Sterling shrugged. “It’s not the Indian way to talk about magic. Moonfeather kept it hidden. So do you, for that matter. I’d not have seen it if I hadn’t bedded you.”

Cailin touched her amulet. “I wish I’d had time to love him,” she said. “I didn’t think there was room in my heart for another father, but—”

A musket cracked from the hillside behind them. Cailin twisted to see a puff of white smoke.

“Get down, you little fool,” Sterling warned. He shoved her behind a charred log and fired off a return shot at the small moving figures in the distance. After what seemed an impossible delay, one Indian toppled over and rolled down the slope.

“Looks like our ploy didn’t work too long,” Cailin said.

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

She felt as though she was going to be sick. If the Mohawks had followed them, that meant they knew that the two of them weren’t with Cameron. Her father, Lachpi, and the others must be dead or captured.

“We can’t stay here,” Sterling said. “They could circle around and come at us from two sides.”

“I hope Cameron’s dead,” she whispered dully. “Better dead than being taken back to the village and burned alive.”

Sterling looked down into her eyes. “They’d not be taken,” he assured her. “Lachpi would see to that.” Sterling began to work his way right on his hands and knees. “There’s a washout a little ways ahead. I saw it from the ridge. If we can reach that, it will give us cover to get out of this burned area. Stay close, and keep your head down.”

Once Cailin and Sterling reached the gully, they got to their feet and sprinted a few hundred yards into a low place. They waded a stream and dashed into the forest beyond that.

An hour later, two Mohawks leaped from the foliage ahead of them. Both braves fired. At the same instant, Sterling threw himself on top of Cailin, knocking her flat. Before she could catch her breath, he had raised to one knee, leveled his pistol, and shot the first warrior through the heart.

The second warrior screeched an Iroquois war cry as he dashed toward them swinging a war club. Sterling flung the empty pistol into the Mohawk’s face, spoiling his aim and giving himself a few seconds to pull his tomahawk from his belt. The Indian balanced on the balls of his feet and edged to the left.

Cailin spat sand and dirt from her mouth and raised her head. The forest around them was hot and still. Not a bird chirped; not a squirrel chattered. Cailin could smell the Mohawk and hear his heavy breathing. Cautiously, she dragged her pistol from her hunting bag and cocked it.

The Mohawk’s sloe eyes were focused on Sterling. As soon as the brave moved far enough to the left so that Sterling was out of her line of fire, she took aim at the black circle painted in the center of the warrior’s chest and squeezed the trigger.

The flintlock roared, and a neat, round hole appeared in the black circle. The Mohawk’s eyes widened, he took a few steps, and then he fell with blood running from the corner of his mouth.

Sterling grinned at Cailin. “Good shooting.” He grabbed the dead man’s rifle and slammed it against a tree. After disposing of the first brave’s gun in the same manner, he stripped them of powder and shot, and stuck an additional tomahawk in his belt. Then he removed one of the brave’s moccasins and put them on his bloody bare feet. Motioning for her to follow, he started down the deer trail at a trot.

The sun was high overhead when they crossed another river and stopped to rest in a natural rock shelter. “Get some sleep,” he told her. “I’ll try and find us something to eat.”

“Don’t leave me,” she begged him.

“We have to keep up our strength, Cailin. You especially.” He put two fingers under her chin and tilted her face up. “I want you to know that I’m glad about the baby. I’m sorry that this is hard on you. I promised once that I’d take care of you, and I haven’t done much of a job, but—”

She smiled at him. “I’m not complaining.”

“No, you’re not.” He grinned. “Some honeymoon.”

“You really want this babe?”

He nodded. His dark eyes gleamed with moisture. “We’ll make it home,” he said. “All three of us.”

She covered his hand with hers and brought them to her flat stomach. “Our son won’t be born until February or March by my reckoning. Surely, we’ll be home by the time the leaves start to turn color.”

He leaned his rifle against the rock wall and pulled her into his arms. For a long time, he held her and didn’t speak. And then he said, “Where’s home, woman? The Chesapeake or Scotland?” He pushed back Moonfeather’s shawl and buried his face in her hair. “You can’t expect me to walk out of hell and then let you leave me.”

“I promised, Sterling. I gave my word to my family, but I can’t leave you. What can I do?”

“I’m your family now. We can send for them. Hell, I’d go myself before I’d let you risk your life to go into Scotland.”

She chuckled and wiggled free. “Before you’d let me risk my life?” She looked around her. “This isn’t exactly the deacon’s parlor we’re sitting in.”

“I mean what I say. I’ll not let you cross the ocean again.”

She met his gaze stubbornly, then shrugged and made an attempt to lighten his mood. “Look at you,” she said. “You look more Indian than white.”

Sterling glanced down at the beaded Iroquois strap that held his hunting bag and powder horn, and at his scanty loincloth and moccasins. “No war paint,” he commented wryly.

“You do seem more Shawnee than English out here,” she said.

“And I’ll look more white when we return to the settlements.” He grinned again, a slightly crooked, devil-may-care smile that made her go all soft inside. “I’ve no wish to raise our children in a wigwam.” His eyes grew serious. “But I will try and give them a respect for my mother’s people and their ways. I’m only part English, Cailin. I forgot that for too long. Whatever I do with my life, I’ll still have two sets of heritages to draw on.”

“Does that include Indian magic?” she asked.

“When necessary.”

She nodded. “I still don’t understand it. I saw Moonfeather walk across those hot coals with my own eyes. I saw, but I canna believe it.”

He chuckled. “She’s a peace woman. Rules for normal people don’t apply.”

She sighed, sat down, and put her head back against the rock. “Maybe I am hungry,” she admitted. “I’ll have roast beef, potatoes browned with onion, and—”

He chuckled. “How does raw trout sound?”

“Awful.”

“A little wild onion, and you’ll never know the difference.”

“Don’t be gone long. I’m only brave when you’re with me,” she said.

“Try and sleep. I don’t know how long we’ll be safe here, and I can promise you, we’ll walk all night.”

“You be careful,” she admonished him. “I want our son to have a father in residence.”

“Me too.”

Nothing could stop the constriction of her throat as she watched his broad back vanish through the trees. She was determined not to be childish and shame herself by crying again. She tried to ignore the rustle of branches and the other sounds of the deep forest around her.

Were there bears out there? she wondered. More wolves? She shivered. Sterling really didn’t expect her to sleep, did he? She rubbed her bare arms to brush away the goose bumps and vowed to stay wide awake and alert until he got back. She was too frightened to sleep. At least, she thought she was. But her eyelids grew heavy in the still afternoon heat.

The grating sound of gravel scraping underfoot woke her. Cailin opened her eyes with a start and saw Ohneya standing over her, a sixteen-inch scalping knife in his hand and murder flickering in his black heathen eyes.

C
ailin screamed. Ohneya’s painted skull face glowed white in the shadow of the overhanging rock. Whispering harsh, guttural threats in Mohawk, he came at her. She pressed herself against the granite wall, but there was no place to run and nowhere to hide.

Ohneya grabbed her hair and yanked back, slashing down with his knife to cut her throat from ear to ear. She scooped up a handful of sand with her left hand and threw it full into his grotesque face. He howled in rage as the sand blinded his eyes.

Cailin twisted away. His steel blade missed her jugular and sliced a fiery trail of pain across the upper section of her right arm. Ohneya drew back his arm to strike again.

Then he shuddered and fell forward heavily on top of Cailin, Sterling’s tomahawk buried between his shoulder blades. He convulsed twice and gave an agonized groan. Sterling seized him by the shoulders and dragged him away. The Mohawk’s body sprawled across the back of the cave, his sightless eyes already glazing over.

“Are you all right?” Sterling demanded as he pulled Cailin to her feet. He saw the blood running down her arm and swore a foul oath.

Drawing his own knife, he cut a strip of cloth from Ohneya’s shirt and wrapped it tightly around her arm. “It’s not deep,” he said. “It’s a good thing you yelled your head off.”

Her teeth were chattering. “Next time ... next time, don’t be so slow.”

“That bastard.” Sterling put his moccasined foot in the center of Ohneya’s chest and took hold of the Mohawk’s scalp lock.

“No!” Cailin cried. “Don’t.”

Sterling glanced back at her and sheathed his knife. “For your sake, woman,” he agreed. “But he deserved to lose his soul. Without his scalp, they wouldn’t let him into heaven or hell—or wherever Mohawks go when they die.”

“No more blood,” she begged him. “We’ve seen enough bloodshed.”

He nodded.

“Now what?”

“Now, Highlander, we start running again, north, out of Mohawk country into Canada. We’ll have to cross the St. Lawrence River and swing west around Lake Ontario. Losing their war chief on top of Bear Dancer’s death will slow the Iroquois down for a week or so. But once they elect a new leader, they’ll call in the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. The entire Iroquois Confederacy will be hot for our scalps.”

“Couldn’t we go to some French settlement and—”

He uttered a sound of derision. “Not if you want to stay alive. The French would be quick enough to trade us back to the Iroquois. They’re as eager to court favor with the Five Nations as the English are.” He enfolded her in his arms. “I’ll get us home in one piece,” he promised her softly. “It just may not be as quick as you’d hoped. I believe the Ottawa will help us. They’re Algonquian-speaking and not at war with the Shawnee; at least they weren’t the last time I heard. If we have to, we’ll go west to the Menominee. They’ve been our traditional allies, and they’ll welcome a sister of a Shawnee peace woman.”

“So we go south to the Chesapeake by walking north and then so far west that the maps don’t show anything but emptiness.”

“Something like that,” he admitted. “Trust me.”

She sighed. “That’s what got me into all this in the first place.”

 

The first crimson and gold leaves of autumn floated down around their shoulders in an Ottawa fishing camp in Canada. As Sterling had said, the two had found refuge among the northern cousins of the Shawnee after weeks of forced marches and near starvation.

The Mohawk had hunted them fiercely. Twice, they’d nearly escaped death by ambush. Cailin had lost track of how many warriors Sterling had killed. She had shot three, and one—she was certain—she’d finished off. She’d seen his war-painted body sink in the St. Lawrence River.

The Ottawa had confirmed Sterling’s suspicions that the French would betray them. One hunter had told of being offered a reward of fifty pounds for Sterling’s head. She was worth thirty pounds, a detail he teased her about over and over.

An old squaw, Kills Birds With a Sling, made a dye of walnut hulls for Cailin’s hair and skin, and dressed her from head to toe in an Ottowa wedding dress and moccasins Kills Birds had sewn for her granddaughter. Sterling traded his extra flintlock pistol for the clothing, and the elderly woman’s son and daughter-in-law let them stay until Cailin was rested enough to resume the journey.

It had been Sterling’s idea to try to follow the northern shore of Lake Ontario south and west, either crossing Lake Erie by canoe or circling it to reach the Ohio country. The Huron, or what was left of them, prevented any attempt at that option. Smallpox had broken out among the tribes, and animosity was running high toward strangers of any nationality. Instead, the two continued west, passing from village to village, guided by hunters or traveling family groups.

The pace was no longer urgent, and Cailin found inner peace in the days and nights of walking though the vast timberlands beside her husband. They were no longer Sterling and Cailin, an Englishman and a Scotswoman, but the Shawnee Warrior Heart and his Delaware Indian wife Sweet Spring. Not even the occasional glimpse of a gray furry shadow moving through the trees or the far-off howl of a wolf disturbed her.

To her delight, Sweet Spring found that she had a talent for learning languages. Soon she began to understand basic phrases in Algonquian and even to venture a few words in return. Their lives were surprisingly simple and carefree. By day, they walked. At night, they sat beside a campfire with new friends and shared food, gossip, and laughter. Each night, Sweet Spring slept in her husband’s strong arms. And each morning, she became more aware of the new life she carried within her.

None of their hosts believed that Sweet Spring was really Indian, but it didn’t matter. She was invariably shown a warmth and hospitality that she had rarely known, even in the bosom of her own Highlands. Once she stopped looking at the native peoples through Scottish eyes, she became captivated by their kindness, their generosity, and the love they showed toward their families and friends.

The autumn days slipped by like beads on a string. And as Cailin became more absorbed with her coming babe, she put the end of the trip out of her mind and concentrated on living each hour to the fullest.

Sterling was a tender and passionate lover. He watched over his wife with compassion and unending patience. Sometimes, they talked late at night when the sky rang with the mournful calls of wild geese flying south. Cailin loved these times most of all, when they were alone in a blanket, sharing silly jokes and planning for the joyful arrival of their son.

In late October, Cailin woke to find the forest white with snow. The first dusting melted by mid-afternoon, but the temperature dropped day by day. Sterling exchanged a Huron knife for a woman’s cape of otter skin, and an Ojibwa hunter gifted Cailin with high moccasins of fur and a pair of child’s snowshoes.

Soon winter came to grip the north country in earnest. The last canoe passage was fraught with danger from chunks of floating ice and stretches of frozen water too thin to support human weight. On Christmas Day, Cailin and Sterling were welcomed into a Menominee village by the young chief, Coiled Plume, and his laughing wife, Heron.

In less than an hour, Sterling and Cailin were treated to a feast of roast duck stuffed with onions and wild rice and escorted to a spotlessly clean wigwam near the center of town.

“You must be very weary,” Heron said in a mixture of English and Algonquian. “My sister and her family are away for the winter. She would insist that you care for her home and keep the crows from nesting on her hearth.”

“Yes,” Coiled Plume insisted. “Tomorrow, will be time enough for talk. There is much this man would ask you about the English soldiers and the price of beaver in the east. Tomorrow, we will smoke a pipe and share hunting stories. You must consider our village your own for as long as you like.”

When they were alone in the wigwam beside a crackling fire, Sterling looked into Cailin’s tired eyes and took her stiff fingers in his. Rubbing her chapped hands to warm them, he promised that she could rest there until the birth of the child. “Coiled Plume assures me that there is plenty of meat, and the elk are numerous this winter. We will go no farther until the spring thaw.”

Cailin nodded. It was time to stop, time to wait. The wigwam was snug and cozy, and her belly was full of hot food. Curling up on a thick bearskin rug, she put her head in her husband’s lap and closed her eyes. Not even the baby’s vigorous kicking could prevent her from drifting off into a deep sleep. She dreamed of a hillside of purple heather and the shrill coo of infant laughter.

 

Cailin was watching Heron prepare a porridge of wild rice and dried berries when her first labor cramp hit. Cailin’s back had been aching since the night before, but she attributed the pain to a spill she’d taken on ice the morning before. It hadn’t been a bad fall, just enough to shake her up. She’d not even mentioned it to Sterling before he left to hunt deer with Heron’s husband and several other Menominee braves.

Cailin clasped her swollen middle and sat down. “Oh,” she gasped. She let out her breath and waited. After a minute or two, she relaxed and shrugged. “It’s nothing,” she said in English to her friend. “I just—”

The next cramp seized her and doubled her up.

“We make ready for little one,” Heron said.

“No, it can’t be,” Cailin insisted. “This is late January. I didn’t expect the baby for another three weeks.”

Heron chuckled. “Heron birth two. Baby come when baby come.” Putting a sturdy arm under Cailin’s shoulder, she helped her back to her own wigwam.

“Sterling said they wouldn’t be back tonight,” Cailin said as she sat down on her sleeping platform. Another pain rocked her, and she felt light-headed. She had known that childbirth was uncomfortable, but she hadn’t thought that labor would come on so swiftly.

“Heron go for Pine Basket. She wise. Bring many children into world. Pine Basket have ...” She used a word that Cailin couldn’t understand but suspected meant a particular herb. “Make hurt less,” Heron finished. Then she smiled and squeezed Cailin’s hand. “No have fear, Sweet Spring. Tomorrow, you be happy with little one in your arms and proud husband.”

Minutes passed, and the contractions came harder. Her water broke, soaking her legs with birth fluid.

Old Pine Basket was pleased. She stirred a handful of powdered root into a pot containing a few cups of water, and insisted that Cailin drink the warm, bitter liquid. Then she ordered the patient up on her feet. With the aid of two other women, they kept Cailin walking back and forth. “Earth pull child,” she explained. “Mother sing, dance. Tea stop pain.”

Pine Basket’s brew did ease the pain. The contractions continued all afternoon and into the night. When Cailin could no longer walk, they stripped off her clothes and laid her on the smooth underside of a clean bison robe.

Sometime after midnight, the contractions slowed. When dawn came, the child had moved no farther down the birth canal, and Cailin was growing frantic.

The sun was high in the cloudless heavens when the hunting party returned. When Sterling reached Cailin’s side, his face was bleak with worry.

She had not screamed when Pine Basket’s tea no longer blocked the pain, but she couldn’t help crying out when she saw Sterling.

“Shhh, shhh,” he soothed. “I’m here.” Seeing Cailin like this was a shock. Her hair was soaked with sweat, her lips were swollen and bleeding from being bitten, and her strained features revealed the agony she was in. “I’m here, and everything’s going to be all right,” he promised her.

“Dinna leave me,” she pleaded.

“I won’t leave you.”

“You should not stay,” Heron warned.

The other women were clearly disturbed by his presence. “They say that a man at a childbed is bad luck,” Pine Basket mumbled.

“That’s crazy,” he said. “I wish I could take this pain from you, Cailin. Since I can’t, the least I can do is to give you someone to hold on to.” He took her hands and held them. Something was wrong. He felt it in his bones; he’d suspected it for hours. That’s why he’d hurried home instead of staying out to try to bring down a few more deer. And now that he was with Cailin, he had no intention of being hustled off by a gaggle of women.

Heron frowned and whispered something that Sterling couldn’t catch. Then she tapped his arm.

“Dinna go,” Cailin said.

“I’m not,” he assured her.

Heron tugged at his hand.

“I’m just going outside,” he said to Cailin. “I’ll be right back. I need to wash the deer blood off.”

“Come back,” she gasped. “Please.”

Outside, he glanced at Heron. “What is it?”

The Menominee woman shook her head. “Bad. Very bad. Pine Basket say baby is turned.” She motioned with her hands. “Not headfirst, but back and bottom.”

“A breech birth?” His pulse quickened. He was no expert in midwifery, but even he knew that a breech birth was a difficult one, often ending in death for the child.

Heron shook her head. “Baby stuck. No come. If child no turn by self, baby die, mother die.”

Sterling refused to accept what she was saying. “That’s crazy. Can’t you turn the child like you’d do a calf?”

Heron burst into tears. “Baby caught like beaver in trap. Pine Basket want to kill baby.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Kill baby. Save mother.” She wiped her tear-streaked face. “Pine Basket say, no choice. Baby will die. If she kill baby now, mother have chance have another baby.”

“You’re telling me that you want to kill our child, and that I may lose Cailin—Sweet Spring—as well?” Hot fear spilled through him. “Not Cailin,” he swore. “I won’t let her die. Not for a hundred babies.”

He entered the wigwam with a sinking heart. Heron whispered to the women, and they all filed out, leaving him alone with his wife. He knelt beside her and took her hands.