Lori Benton (12 page)

“Did you really live wild with them Injuns up north?” Samantha asked in a high, clear voice. “And why are you wearing that strap across your forehead?”

A maternal hand clamped over her mouth, too late. Anni’s face went pink with mortification. “Little pitchers … heard what didn’t concern them.”

Everyone seemed poised as if on needle points, awaiting her reaction. After Aram Crane’s undisguised loathing, this innocent inquisition felt
benign, apart from the wringing of her heart. Images of another girl, black haired and browner skinned, swam in her vision.
Goes-Singing
. Not as she’d last seen her, spotted with sores, face drawn with suffering, but curious and full of life, like Anni’s daughter.

She pushed down grief and wrestled her face into a smile. “I did so, little one, yes, but they are not wild. They live in towns, most of them, as you do. This basket I wear is the kind they use when they have more to carry than they can hold in their hands, or are traveling a long distance. You see?”

She shrugged out of the basket and set it on the ground. The girl stepped close. Her brother came near. Both peered within.

“It’s empty,” Samantha protested, sounding exactly like Anni at her age.

“I mean to fill it at the trading store,” Willa said, somehow finding another smile for the child, even as tears pricked her eyes. “Maybe you would like to help me? Both of you?” When the children nodded with enthusiasm, she looked to Anni, suddenly wondering. “Is there still a store?”

It was clear in Anni’s eyes; she knew Willa had been thinking of her own children—her half-Indian children. Anni’s expression was torn between compassion and a repulsion that perhaps she could not help. Willa swallowed, but the grief going down met anger coming up and lodged in her throat like a stone.

“The British tried to burn it, but it’s still standing,” Anni said, a little too brightly. “Old Maeve Keegan’s still there. Well, in and out,” she added, with a tap to her forehead. “Her son keeps the store now. There’s linen—mostly homespun but not all—and caps.”

Willa glanced at Anni’s covered head. Even Samantha wore a tiny ruffled cap over her pale braids. “I never did like them much,” she said, then looked down the slope to the cluster of cabins and log structures. “How many have come back?”

“Between Loyalists decamping and then Oriskany …” Anni looked at her with uncertain eyes, but Willa held her gaze, not wanting her to shy away from the truth of things. “More than half the neighbors you’d remember are dead, many of the rest gone back east. But it’s early days. More may return.”

When they do, Willa thought, and have finished filling up this place again, then what? Will their children move west after the People who have gone that way, like Joseph’s sister and mother and thousands more? Or would peace between her two peoples finally come now? Her two peoples …

Such thoughts found no place to settle in her heart, so she did not speak them aloud. Instead, she reached through a slit in her petticoat to the leather pouch Joseph gave her, hung on a cord at her waist. She extended a handful of coins to Anni. “For the gown and the rest.”

Anni raised a hand but not to receive the coins. “No, Willa. I don’t want—But where did you come by the coin?”

It was a question she ought to have foreseen. Likely Anni was the only soul in Shiloh who knew just how destitute she’d been before the gifts of house plenishings and food—and Joseph’s arrival. She glanced aside at Neil, who’d drifted into conversation with Charles, out of earshot in the noise of the falls. He did not know about the coins. How was she to explain to Anni without revealing Joseph’s presence at the cabin?

Seeing her glance, Anni precluded the need. “Of course. Mr. MacGregor’s paying for his board. But, Willa, Charles and I weren’t the only ones to help—our blacksmith and his wife did as well. Besides, I never expected payment and don’t want any. Having you back with us is enough.”

“Thank you, Anni.” Willa smiled at her friend and slipped the coins back into her pocket, letting the misinterpretation stand. Bending for her basket, she leaned close and asked, “Where is Richard?”

“He rode home that morning from your farm, told the Colonel you’d
come back, packed his saddlebags and left. He’s gone down to German Flats, to find the assessor.” Anni cast a look at the tumpline once again crossing Willa’s forehead, then resolutely linked their arms. “Never mind Richard. There’s me and the children, and Mr. MacGregor on our heels, and none of us mean to leave your side for a moment.”

A rumble of male laughter stilled as Willa entered the store. After the brightness outdoors, it was too dim for her to see the faces of those clustered at the far hearth—particularly when a veritable maze of barrels, tables, and shelves piled with trade goods rose between. She could smell them, their sour stink faint above the crowding odors of wood smoke and tobacco leaf, tallow and tanned hides. Heads craned and mutters rose, but Willa did not catch their words. It was too much to take in at once. Her eyes could find no rest among the clutter of iron, sacking, leather, cloth bolts, wood, glass, copper, tin, and fur.

She’d halted inside the door. Anni edged around her and with hands on hips surveyed the gaping faces emerging from the shadows. “Jack Keegan! Are you back there with that lot? You’ve folk here mean to give you custom.”

During Willa’s childhood, the store’s elderly Irish proprietor, John Keegan, had kept a tap for whiskey and other liquors in a side room. From its doorway now, a long-faced man emerged, ducking the lintel and wiping his hands on an apron.

“Brought me customers, have you, Mrs. Keppler?”

Though white sprinkled his sandy hair, Willa guessed this was Irish John’s son, who she was surprised to remember had gone away trapping down into the Ohio country when she was a small child.

Anni made introductions. “This is Willa Obenchain. And Neil MacGregor, from Philadelphia. Charles and I would be obliged if you’d tend to them.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” From under bushy brows, Keegan’s gaze settled on Willa. “Shall we be starting with you, then, Miss?”

“You mean all of us at once, Jack?”

The crude remark was buried under too much sniggering for Willa to tell which man in back made it, but it stood the hair on her neck erect, as into her mind rose tales of what the militia soldiers had done to the women of the People during raids through the Mohawk Valley and elsewhere.

Jack Keegan, seeing her white-knuckled grip on the musket slung at her shoulder, shot a glower toward the hearth. “I’ll have none of that talk with ladies present.”

“Aw, Jack. She ain’t no—”

“Shut yer trap,” Jack snapped, “or consider my tap shut for the day. That’s all I aim to say on the matter.”

“I’m here as well, let’s not forget!” Red faced with fury, Anni hustled her children back outside, telling them to wait on the porch.

Neil MacGregor’s anger was plain in the set of his jaw. He made as if to study the wares on display, in so doing putting himself between Willa and the men at the hearth. He caught Keegan’s eye. “Have you ink and quills, sir, and a razor and strop I might have a look at whilst ye see to Miss Obenchain?”

“Up front there, back of the counter.” Jack Keegan indicated the long table just opposite the door, then shot Willa a look of apology. He peered at her carrying basket, which rode too high for any but the tallest man to see that it was empty. “Now, Miss, have ye something to barter, or shall I start an account in my book?”

“I have coin to pay.” Hearing the edge in her voice, Willa struggled for calm. Despite her resolve, she tensed as a man she had not noticed seated behind a stack of pelts stood and stepped away from the others. Black haired, heavily muscled through the shoulders and arms, he clutched a worn hat as he stopped in front of Neil and spoke a stream of unintelligible words.

“Ciamar a tha thu, a MhicGriogair? Tha e math do choinneachadh. Is mise Gavan MacNab.”

“Chan eil mi ro dhona, tapa leat.”
Neil’s response was equally incomprehensible,
but the surprise and delight sweeping his features made Willa understand he’d found himself a fellow Scotsman. She’d never heard the Gaelic tongue before but assumed they had exchanged some manner of greeting.

“That’s Gavan MacNab,” Keegan interjected, grinning at her bewilderment. “Our blacksmith since … what, Gavan? Thirteen years back?”

“Aye,” Gavan MacNab agreed and, nodding at Willa, switched nimbly to English—or something near it, for the man’s accent was twice as thick as Neil MacGregor’s. “Ye maybe dinna mind me, lass, as I was new come to Shiloh the spring ye was carrit away, but I’d seen ye with Miss Anni here, lassies the pair o’ ye. Can I be telling my Leda ye’ve come to town? She wouldna be averse to speaking a word to ye, I’m thinking.”

A beat of silence passed before Willa realized a question had been asked her. She nodded, uncertain what she’d just agreed to, and was still frowning after the blacksmith’s departing back when Anni leaned close. “He meant his wife. It was Leda MacNab gave you the gown you’re wearing.”

Sturdy leather shoes, woolen stockings, candles, a pair of horn lanterns, scrap lead for bullets … cornmeal, maple sugar, soap … a kneading trough, two pewter plates … Willa filled the carrying basket and piled the overflow by the door. Yards of ticking, enough checked linsey-woolsey for a skirt and short gown, half-bleached linen for shifts … thread, needles, buttons, shears. No ribbon. No lace. One cap. Neil’s purchases, though few, added to the bulk so that when it came to reckoning the accounts, Willa wondered how they would get it all back to the farm.

Though no further comments were aimed at her directly, the men now playing draughts at the hearth spoke and laughed in low murmurs, and there was an ugliness to the sound that was difficult to ignore. Despite the blacksmith’s friendly overture, Neil MacGregor was subdued, as
mindful as she of the thin barrier of civility maintained by the presence of Anni and the proprietor. Willa saw his surprise when she took from her pocket some of Joseph’s coins, but a warning glance prevented his asking about them.

Keegan had created separate accounts in his book. Neil bent over the counter to frown at the column indicated as his. A tide of red rose from the collar of his coat.

“Do you need for me to pay?” Willa asked, thinking it more than he could afford after his losses. She glanced at the total for the ink, quills, razor, and strop, and read it aloud. “I have enough,” she added, but Neil’s expression had cleared. He took from his satchel a small leather fold, picked out the exact amount of his purchases, and handed the few coins to Keegan.

Willa was still puzzling over his hesitation—or had it been confusion?—when behind her a high, wobbly Irish voice slurred out a name.

“Dagna Mehler?”

In a doorway behind the counter, beaming at Willa, stood a shrunken wisp of a woman with white hair pulled back from an age-spotted brow. Though one corner of her mouth now sagged and she was greatly aged, Willa recognized Maeve Keegan, old Irish John’s wife. She’d been a friend of her grandmother’s, the only friend Oma ever made in Shiloh.

Willa took a step toward the woman, remembering Anni’s mention of her at the mill and thinking perhaps Maeve Keegan had mistaken her for Oma.

“No, Ma.” Jack Keegan stepped between them. “This is Mrs. Mehler’s granddaughter, Willa Obenchain.”

“I know who it is!” the old woman snapped, as a thin string of drool moistened her chin. She was out from behind the counter faster than Jack could prevent, grasping Willa’s arm. “Dagna Mehler.”

Willa remembered Maeve Keegan as a robust and domineering figure. The change in her was shocking. It was like being clung to by a child.

“Jack, you gonna stand there letting an Indian hug on your ma?”

“Yeah, Jack. If she’s of that mind, send her back here. Wager she’s had worse than us.”

Resolve forgotten, Willa put the old woman away from her and faced the back of the store, where the crude comments had issued. “What do you know of me that you speak such things? You know nothing.”

“Richard Waring heard it from your own mouth,” one of the men at the game board shot back. “So don’t go pretending you kept yourself to yourself all them years with the Mohawks. You ain’t fit to walk that street out there, much less to come around doing trade in your begged-for gown. There’s other ways of doing trade for your likes.”

The words struck like stones, stealing the air from her lungs.

“That’s done it.” Neil MacGregor started for the back of the store, then stopped, his face going white. Jack Keegan had grasped his arm—the splinted one.

“Sorry.” He let go quick, then raised his voice to the back of the store. “Now didn’t I tell you boys—”

“You
boys
,” a third voice said, hurling like a lance across the cluttered trading post, a voice accustomed to authority. And obedience. “Abe, Dexter, Orram—clear out of here. Your game’s done, and it won’t be played again.”

Willa turned and felt a jolt drop down her spine. She thought for an instant it was Richard. It was not, though the man filling the doorway, blocking the daylight beyond, was very like his eldest son and would have been nearly as tall if he had not been bent to the support of a walking stick.