Judith E French (27 page)

Harrison gasped with fear, but he made no outcry. In seconds Wolf Shadow had the white man facedown on the uneven plank floor, his mouth gagged, his hands and feet bound behind him.

Wolf Shadow rose and unlocked the outside door. Two Indian braves, wearing the same paint and Huron clothing as Wolf Shadow, slipped silently into the room. The first warrior, a lean Shawnee named Spear Thrower, handed Wolf Shadow a loaded musket.

The second man, Two Crows, leaned close to Wolf Shadow and whispered, “We found Zeke in the barn. He’ll not interfere.”

“You didn’t have to kill him, did you?” Wolf Shadow asked. He’d given orders that none of the whites at Clough’s trading post should be hurt unnecessarily.

Two Crows shook his head and grinned. “No, we just scared him half to death.” He tapped the big skinning knife stuck in his belt. “He took one look at me, dropped his knife, and ran.”

“Good,” Shadow replied. Motioning to his companions to remain where they were, he pushed aside the deerskin curtain and moved silently into the store.

The trading post was laid out like a letter T. The main section of the building was two cabins built end to end. One was the original structure, the actual store; the second was the public room where Clough sold food and drink and sometimes took money from travelers to let them sleep on the floor. Both the store and the public room had doors on the front leading outside. The storeroom had a door leading to Clough’s living quarters at the back, as well as the entrance to the public room.

Shadow could hear Jacob Clough’s voice plainly from the lean-to rooms in the back. Jacob was cursing his Ojibwa woman.

Three more disguised braves waited outside the storeroom door. Heavily armed and hooded, they moved into the trading post as soon as Shadow lifted the iron bar across the door. It was pitch-black, but he didn’t need light to identify his fellow tribesmen—he knew the scent and walk of each Shawnee warrior as he knew the lines on the palms of his own hands.

Yellow Elk would be first. He was the oldest, a seasoned warrior whose black hair bore threads of gray. He always placed himself in the greatest danger, to prove to the younger men that he was as vigorous as he used to be. Close on Yellow Elk’s heels was He-Who-Runs. Shadow recognized the short, quick breaths He-Who-Runs took when he was courting danger. And the solid bulk behind them would be Fat Boy, the half Delaware. Broad and muscular, slow to anger and slower of speech, Fat Boy was one of the bravest men Wolf Shadow had ever known. When he walked, Fat Boy planted each foot as though it were an oak that would grow in that spot for a hundred years.

“Harrison!” Jacob Clough called. “Where the hell are you?” Wolf Shadow whirled as he heard the white trader coming. “Didn’t I—”

Shadow leveled the musket at Jacob’s midsection, and the white man groaned aloud.

“Don’t shoot,” he cried. “Don’t shoot me, for God’s sake. I’m your friend. I’ve done nothing wrong. Your chiefs have given me the right to trade here.”

The two warriors from the public room moved into position behind Jacob Clough. Wolf Shadow acknowledged them with a nod. “See if the woman is alone,” he ordered in the Iroquois language. The men obeyed without hesitation.

“I’ve no quarrel with the Huron,” the trader insisted shrilly. Shadow backed him slowly into the public room as He-Who-Runs and Yellow Elk began to search the store for muskets and powder and shot.

“You sell whiskey to Indians,” Wolf Shadow accused in broken English. The sound of breaking wood came from the store.

“Here guns!” Fat Boy called.

“You can’t steal my guns!” Jacob protested.

“You break white man’s law, sell whiskey,” Shadow said. He raised the muzzle of the musket until it brushed Jacob’s long nose. “No whiskey. Whiskey bad for Indian. Make Indian crazy. Indian drunk on firewater—you cheat him.”

“I ain’t cheated no Hurons. Ask anybody.” Jacob was breathing hard, and sweat ran off his fear-contorted face in thick drops.

Wolf Shadow prodded him in the throat with the musket and motioned toward the door. “Go.”

As they walked out into the snow, Wolf Shadow could hear the crackle of burning logs. Behind the trading post was an old one-room cabin, half-sunken into the hillside. Jacob used it as a place to keep his stock of whiskey. The cabin door hung open at a crazy angle, and inside, one of Shadow’s men was systematically smashing the liquor barrels and jugs.

“What have you done?” the trader cried. “You’ve ruined me!”

“Look and remember,” Wolf Shadow said harshly in Iroquois. He switched back to broken English. “This time we burn firewater, steal guns. You sell whiskey again—you die. Your scalp dry over Huron fire.” Shadow glanced over his shoulder. Yellow Elk and He-Who-Runs were strapping a bundle of muskets onto Jacob’s gray mare.

Fat Boy appeared at Shadow’s shoulder and held out a black leather box. The Shawnee warrior opened it. Inside lay an array of gleaming knives, saws, scissors, probes, and other unfamiliar steel items. The silk-lined box had been cleverly constructed so that every square inch was filled. The spaces between the instruments were packed with needles, rolls of silk thread, tiny glass bottles, and even smaller round, wooden containers.

Wolf Shadow touched the surface of a small box. There were slits cut into the surface, and from each hole protruded a razor sharp blade. He turned blazing eyes on his white captive. “What is?” he demanded.

“For bloodletting,” the trader stammered. “It’s a surgeon’s kit . . . nothing of value to you. Instruments for English doctor. Bad medicine for Indian. Very bad.”

Wolf Shadow nodded and closed the case, then motioning for Fat Boy to add it to the loot being loaded onto the horses. He turned back to Jacob. “Remember,” he repeated. “Next time, wolves chew your bones.” He uttered a short yell, waved to his companions, and then loped off into the trees.

Jacob stared after them through the falling snow. “You’ve ruined me,” he cried. “Damn you! Thieving Indian bastards!”

From the open doorway, Abequa, his Ojibwa wife watched. Jacob’s back was to her as he cursed and shook his fist after the raiding party. He didn’t see her smile.

W
olf Shadow led his men back through the falling snow to a cave an hour’s march from the trading post. There, two half-grown Shawnee boys waited anxiously beside a small fire for the war party’s return. When Shadow gave the repeated hoot of a great horned owl—the signal that all was well—the boys ran out of the cave smiling.

Despite the narrow, hidden entrance, the shelter was high and deep enough to bring the two horses inside, out of the bitter weather. The boys led the animals into the back of the cave and gave them water while the men settled around the fire pit and began to cut off chunks of hot roasted venison. The silence that the warriors had maintained since they’d left Jacob Clough’s was broken, and the Shawnee men began to laugh and talk all at once as they removed their Huron disguises.

Spear Thrower slapped He-Who-Runs on the back and began to tell him an elaborate yarn about the fight Jacob Clough’s hired man had put up in the barn. The men pretended not to notice young Snowshoe, Yellow Elk’s son, who had finished his chores and moved close to the men to listen to the story. The second boy, Beaver Tooth, joined the group as well.

“Pay Spear Thrower no mind,” Two Crows chided. “There wasn’t any fight. The white coward ran like a startled doe when he saw Spear Thrower’s face. He’s probably still running, for all I know. Maybe he’ll run all the way back to the Great Salt Sea.”

He-Who-Runs winked at Yellow Elk. “Nothing strange about that. Lots of people run away when they see Spear Thrower’s face. His wife says he’s so ugly she wouldn’t put up with him if he wasn’t such a good hunter.”

“Hunter, nothing,” Spear Thrower insisted. “Lover! I’m such a great lover, she knows she’d never find anyone who could please her like I do.”

“Well, if we’re going to talk about pleasing women . . .” Yellow Elk put in.

“Watch what you say in front of your son,” Two Crows warned. “He’ll tell his mother, and you’ll be in big trouble.”

Snowshoe, a muscular boy of fourteen with light skin and chestnut-brown hair, reddened and stared at the ground. His father clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. “I wasn’t going to say anything that would anger your mother,” Yellow Elk assured him. “I was only going to remind Fat Boy of the time . . .”

Wolf Shadow let the voices of his comrades recede in his mind until they were mere whispers. Crouching by the edge of the fire pit, he warmed his hands as he stared into the hypnotic flames. He’d already stripped off the whiskey-sodden clothes and scrubbed the hated Huron markings from his face and arms with handfuls of snow until his skin tingled; now he was in the process of purifying his thoughts.

Crossing the border between this real world and the spirit realm was not as difficult for Wolf Shadow as it was for other men. He was a moon dancer—what the white men called a medicine man. He knew the secrets of healing, not only the ailments of the physical body, but of the mind as well. But he was not just an ordinary shaman; he was more powerful than that. He was called a great shaman.

According to Shawnee tradition, a great shaman, one who possessed extraordinary powers, was born into the tribe only once every hundred years—at a time when his people needed him most. This special man, with one moccasined foot in the spirit world and one planted firmly in this world, was expected to be a diplomat and political adviser to the chiefs, as well as a counselor to individual members of the tribe. His was a life of service to his people. The task required such dedication that there was no room in the shaman’s life for personal ambition or selfish desire.

Wolf Shadow folded his arms across his bare chest and exhaled softly. His mind was still troubled—so much so that he could not concentrate on his meditation. His jaw tightened imperceptibly as he gazed into the red-gold flames.

They reminded him of the white woman’s hair.

A rush of impatience caused his frame to tense. He could almost hear the scornful mocking of his boyhood teacher, Red Smoke.
Wooden head! Control of others begins with control of self.
By force of will alone, Wolf Shadow compelled his muscles to relax, the coursing of his blood to slow.

Yellow Elk pushed a chunk of meat into Wolf Shadow’s hand. “Eat,” the older man urged with a grin. “There’s a time for dreaming and a time for filling one’s stomach.”

Obediently, Wolf Shadow took a bite of the juicy meat, but the battle still raged in the dark corners of his mind. He was trying to decide if he should do something about the white woman. He chewed slowly. Considering the welfare of an enemy woman was a grave fault for a dedicated shaman. It had been many years since his personal concerns had interfered with his duty.

He should have been relaxing with the others . . .

The mission had gone well. Jacob Clough’s stock of firewater had been destroyed, and the trader had been badly frightened. No lives, red or white, had been lost. And, lastly, valuable guns had been taken for the Shawnee cause.

His plan had been executed without a single mishap . . .

He paused and wiped the corners of his mouth, carefully washing his hands in the bowl of clean water provided by one of the boys.

The raid had been perfect—except for the woman.

Wolf Shadow took another bite of the venison. The succulent meat seemed tasteless. By the Great Circle of Life, why did that pale-skinned woman plague him so? He bit down hard and winced as he caught the back edge of his tongue between his teeth.

Could she be a witch? he wondered. Then he saw the humor of his own apprehension, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. He was becoming as superstitious as an old grandmother.

He sniffed. If the one they called Fiona was an enchantress, she had the most shapely legs he’d ever seen on a witch. Although her skin was so pale it freckled and her hair was an unnatural shade of red, she was young and strangely attractive. Wolf Shadow stared into the fire and let the memory of the woman materialize in his mind’s eye.

His sensual lips tightened. No Shawnee man could consider such a woman handsome, he decided. True, she was small and well-proportioned, and she walked with inborn grace, as an Indian woman should, but there the similarities ended. Fiona’s eyes were round instead of slanted, and no woman who possessed eyes of that strange color could be called beautiful. Proper women had eyes as black as a crow’s wing. While Fiona’s were the shade of a sprouting oak leaf. Her chin was pointed instead of round. Her nose was too thin, and it turned up slightly at the end. By Shawnee standards, the white woman must be considered ill-favored.

Instantly he rejected the label. The need for honesty in thought and action had been drummed into his being since he was a barefoot toddler. He could not call such a female, not even an enemy squaw, plain. No, he decided, green eyes and hair like beaten copper did not make a woman plain—they made her unique.

It was a puzzle. He’d been taught that Wishemenetoo, the Great Good Spirit, had created all women alike. Yet no woman Wolf Shadow had ever known was exactly like another; no willow tree was the same . . . no snowflake. His dark sloe eyes caught the gleam of the flames, and his smile widened. Snowflakes caught the moonlight and glistened in the air like quartz crystals. He wondered if Fiona’s hair would shine in the sunlight.

Someone threw a blanket around his shoulders.

“Look at him,” Spear Thrower remarked. “His spirit walks the treetops and leaves his body to freeze.” His laugh was deep and genuine. “The greatest shaman the Shawnee have ever known, and without us to watch out for him, he’d catch his death.”

Wolf Shadow opened his eyes and fixed Spear Thrower with a smoldering gaze. “Be careful how you speak of great magic workers,” he said softly. “One day I might come out of a trance too fast and turn you into a bat.”

Spear Thrower countered the threat with an obscene remark, and Wolf Shadow laughed and threw his arm around his friend.

The good-natured bantering echoed through the cave until the fire died to coals, and the men began to doze. Wolf Shadow remained alert, despite the guard posted outside. His mind was still too busy for sleep.

He glanced around the darkened cave and smiled. It was true what Spear Thrower had said—his friends did look after him. The Shawnee braves who had made up this raiding party were the most courageous of his people, the greatest trackers and the fiercest fighters; they were the best of the best. Most had been his friends since he was a boy. They trusted him, and they believed in him without fearing his powers, as many others did. They accepted his dream of uniting the Shawnee and Delaware tribes to halt the advance of the white men. But even these friends did not realize the extent of the threat the light-skinned Europeans posed to the Indian way of life.

If the white men could not be stopped, they would swallow up the Shawnee land, bite by bite. They would drink the clear, sweet water and leave only fouled mud in their wake. They would not cease their relentless gobbling of the Creator’s blessings until the red man was only a memory in his own land.

Wolf Shadow had devoted his life to the struggle. Nothing else mattered . . . certainly not his own safety. If it came to that, he would sacrifice himself and his comrades to save the Shawnee race.

A branch snapped in the heat of the coals, and fiery red-orange sparks spewed upward into the velvet blackness of the cave. Like glowing bits of stars . . . stars as red and vibrant as the white woman’s hair.

With a sigh, Wolf Shadow leaned over and shook Yellow Elk and whispered instructions into his ear. Then he rose to his feet. From a bundle, he took fringed leggings of elk hide, sewn with the fur inside, stepped into them and knotted the ties at his belt. Over his feet he drew knee-high winter moccasins of otter skin, boots so waterproof and warm that he would not feel the bite of the snow.

Yellow Elk helped him to don the necklace of mountain lion claws and the armbands of copper that fit tightly over his heavily muscled biceps. Then the older warrior adjusted the wolfskin cape—the badge of the shaman’s office—over Wolf Shadow’s broad shoulders and wrapped it tightly at his waist with leather bands to keep out the wind. The wolf’s head with glittering mica eyes and bared teeth settled into place over Wolf Shadow’s hair and forehead, as tightly as a second skin.

Yellow Elk stood back and grinned, but Wolf Shadow could not miss the hint of awe in his friend’s eyes. “Even the ghosts will fear you tonight,” Yellow Elk joked. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his tanned throat, and his voice became husky with truth. “I know I’d not want to meet you in the woods. You look more spirit than man—that’s certain.”

Wolf Shadow bared his teeth in the hint of a smile and nodded his thanks. Then, slinging a musket over one shoulder, he moved out onto the softly falling snow as silently as a night spirit.

 

Fiona O’Neal was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life.

She had been afraid when she was ten years old . . . when her mother had died in childbed and left her alone and destitute in the slums of Galway. She’d traveled for days along the stony roads of Ireland, a hungry, ragged urchin, searching for a grandfather she’d never met . . . a grandfather who’d cursed the day she was born.

Years later, she’d felt sickening doubts of fear when she’d sold herself into slavery and sailed away from her homeland to an unknown future in America. She’d trembled with anguish and dismay when her indenture had been sold to Jacob Clough and she realized that he meant to take her into the trackless wilderness.

But she’d never known the panic she felt now at the mercy of these men.

She’d regained consciousness to find that she was tied across a mule, being carried God-knows-where by Nigel and Karl. It was pitch-black and snowing. Her feet were so cold they felt like lumps of ice, and her tears froze on her cheeks. The sharp spine of the mule cut into her stomach and made her nauseous—a condition hardly aided by the stench of Nigel’s improperly cured buckskins.

“Untie my hands,” she demanded. “If I must ride this poor creature, at least let me sit it upright—not dangling over the side like a slab of fat pork.”

“The bloody bitch is awake,” Karl snarled.

Nigel laughed coarsely. “I told ye she were.”

They argued then, over whether to untie her or not. In the end Nigel won out, and he stopped the animals and cut her loose. He yanked her against him and slobbered over her face, and he squeezed her breasts roughly when he lifted her back up on the mule, this time in a sitting position. Now, at least, she didn’t want to throw up every time the animal took a step.

She knew what would come when they stopped for the night. No girl-child could grow up on the waterfront of Galway without seeing and hearing what men did to women . . . without learning the shameful names of lust.

She’d been eight when a British soldier had exposed himself to her and offered her a silver penny to rub his shaft. She hadn’t learned to speak English yet, but she wasn’t too young to guess his meaning. An Irish street girl without a father knows when to run, or she doesn’t live long enough to shed a woman’s monthly blood.

The swirling snow had drifted hock deep on the mules, and the icy wind was from the north and rising. The cold cut through the trade blanket and chilled Fiona until her teeth chattered. She fingered the amulet she wore around her neck and prayed the two trappers would go on riding through the shadowy forest forever.

Taking her own life would be a mortal sin, but she’d risk losing her soul to keep these human animals from possessing her body . . . from touching her with their hot, dirty hands. She would kill them both or herself, she vowed.

She clutched the charm and willed herself away from this frozen wilderness. If she clamped her eyes shut and held her breath, she could almost smell the heady fragrance of blue peat smoke and see it rising straight up to heaven from the clusters of whitewashed cottages along the shore of Galway Bay.