Lori Benton (38 page)

Benjamin Rush’s letter, in reply to the letter he’d sent before leaving Schenectady that spring, didn’t contain the news Neil had feared—that he’d been recalled from his wilderness sojourn—though what the man had to relate was bad enough. The crux of it was that the Society was losing interest in his long-delayed expedition, or at least their interest in reimbursing him for any further expenses he had or would incur, or printing the body of his work should it be completed. The doctor had stated tactfully that should his letter find Neil before he was beyond its reach, some evidence of his progress sent in earnest of the completed manuscript might serve to fan the members’ flagging enthusiasm for the project. It was true that unavoidable delays had occurred, and that Neil was not to blame for them, but now that the war was over the Society was ready to regroup, and it was only natural that fresh visions, new directions, would supersede those that seemed of primary interest years ago …

MacNab set the letter aside. “Did ye ne’er tell this Rush all of what befell ye?” The smith tapped his own forehead below the line of his hair, indicating Neil’s scar.

“No, I havena.” Rush knew he’d been injured in the aftermath of Cherry Valley, months after he’d set out from Philadelphia, but Neil had made light of his condition. He’d admitted to the headaches, needing some reason to explain his letters being penned by other hands than his. But he hadn’t told them the worst of it. His failure to be forthcoming had been a mistake.

Call it what it is. A lie of omission
. For all his talk to Willa of trust, he was the one fallen short in that regard. He’d feared his fellow Society members would see him as damaged goods, unfit for the task they’d sent
him to accomplish. In striving to protect his dream, he’d come to the brink of having it snatched from him.

“Mea culpa,”
he murmured, turning to the lean-to’s tiny clay-and-wattle hearth to dish up the stewed rabbit he’d heated for his supper.

As he ladled the stew onto a tin plate, memory of the bear in his path returned with clarity. In that moment he’d known beyond doubt what he was meant to do. What the Almighty spoke to him on that mountainside hadn’t changed. That Willa might never return his love, never want him as he did her, didn’t alter the act of service that love asked of him now. Not
stay
this time. But
go
.

He turned from the hearth as MacNab rose to make for his own table. “I’ve decided a thing, Gavan. Come morning—”

A shadow in the open doorway checked him.

“Mister Neil,” Goodenough said in greeting. “I see I’ve interrupted supper.”

I’m on my way to Miss Anni’s,” Goodenough said, “but wanted to stop in and tell you, in case you see Miss Willa afore she or I do. They fixed a date for that land auction. The Colonel got it in a letter from that fella poked around here back in spring with his maps and deeds.”

Wendell Stoltz. The assessor for the commissioners of confiscation.

“He’s heading back this way soon,” Goodenough added.

Neil swallowed past a knotted throat. “When is it to be?”

“Middle of September, the sixteenth, I think it is.”

Less than three weeks away. If he’d needed confirmation, he had it. “Right, then.” He leaned over the table, palms flat. “There’s a thing I must do, and I must leave Shiloh to do it.”

If Willa had a hope of gaining the proof she needed to save her land, then he must go to Albany and find Tilda Fruehauf—apparently alive and willing to communicate—and let the consequences shake themselves out as they may.

Goodenough looked less than pleased. “Seem like you just come back, saying leaving was a mistake. Where you aiming to go now, Mister Neil?”

“ ’Tis best I dinna say.” The fewer who kent his business, the longer he’d have before Richard Waring deduced where he’d gone and why. “But there’s a concern I have in going. ’Tis Anni. I’ve every reason to think she’ll carry to term, or verra near it, but if she doesna, and I’m not by—”

Goodenough held up a hand. “I’m here. And there’s Miss Leda. It’ll be all right, and if it ain’t, not much can be done even if you were here, is there?”

Her dark eyes defied him to offer argument or platitude. He’d none to give and less experience birthing bairns than she, in any case. “There’s a
thing more I must ask of ye. Both of ye,” he said, turning to include MacNab. “Speak of my leaving to no one.”

“Ye’ve my word,” MacNab said without question.

Goodenough eyed him, less certain. “Folk gonna notice soon enough.”

“Aye. Still, I’m asking you. Please.”

Goodenough heaved a sigh. “All right, Mister Neil. If that’s how you want it.”

“That’s how it has to be.” He saw in her eyes she caught the difference and didn’t know whether to be glad or worried. The last thing he wanted was for Waring—father
or
son—to get wind of his absence any sooner than was necessary. He was tempted to explain his journey to Goodenough, but word was far more likely to reach Willa in so doing, and he didn’t want to make a promise to Willa he mightn’t be able to keep.

There was one thing he needed to say to her, however. Once Goodenough took her leave, he asked Gavan MacNab to help him say it.

Neil folded the letter and sealed it with a candle’s drippings. Not only had MacNab penned it for him, he’d agreed to ride to the cabin and see the letter into Willa’s hands. Unavoidably privy to its contents, the man had been unable to hide his sympathy, which Neil pretended not to see.

“Just one thing, Gavan,” Neil said. “I’m certain Aram Crane’s watching that road, expecting
me
to go to Willa.”

The smith’s gaze sharpened. “Need I expect trouble out o’ him?”

“I’ll not put it past the man,” Neil said, already turning his attention to provisioning the journey east. In brief he explained about the letter gone missing and why he was leaving for Albany—and why it needed to be in secret. “I mean to leave as soon after nightfall as I can slip away unseen.”

Gavan’s black brows drew low. “I ken Willa’s been waitin’ for word from back east, something that might be o’ help to her—and the contrary
to Waring. Even supposing he stole the letter, ye dinna think he’d do anythin’ worse to thwart her, do ye?”

Anything and everything
, Neil thought.

“I’m asking you to trust me, Gavan—and take care. If the road past the mill is watched tomorrow, dinna go. Wait. But the soonest you can take it safely, I’d be obliged.”

He picked his slow way along Black Kettle Creek, beneath a moonless sky, then south on a broader track from the point where the creek emptied into the West Canada, flowing down to the Mohawk River, but it wasn’t until a few miles north of German Flats, with the sky beginning to gray, that he kent he was being tracked. While no more than the occasional snapped twig had struck him as anything other than normal nocturnal forest sounds, Seamus had sensed a presence, swiveling long black ears to catch at sounds beyond Neil’s hearing.

Little he could do about it save press on. A chill settled in his bones as he rode. A mist rose off the broad creek, hanging low in the bordering woods as dawn’s gray flushed rose gold. He welcomed the rising sun, not only in hope of catching a glimpse of the rider he was all but certain was keeping pace with him; he’d ridden the past hour with his bladder full and needed badly to find cover in which to stop.

The sun was spilling its liquid light through the trees when he could stand the discomfort no longer. He drew Seamus to a halt and scanned the track behind, which rose to a slight crest, blackly wooded either side, and deserted. Quickly he dismounted.

In the seconds it took him to do so, a rider had materialized in the road behind him, his horse turned sideways as if frozen in the act of crossing, a pale horse gleaming like marble, the mist coiling around its hooves.

Neil took a step toward Seamus, heart knocking like a fist. Then he stopped.

The man on the pale horse would have been immensely tall on his feet, but it wasn’t Richard Waring, whom Neil had feared had followed him. It was Joseph Tames-His-Horse.

As shock and fear subsided, Neil’s impulse was to close the distance between himself and Willa’s clan brother, tell him where he was bound, what he hoped to accomplish, until it struck him that such a mission might be the last thing the man would want to see succeed. Was that why he’d followed him? To prevent his reaching Albany?

But no, he couldn’t ken what Neil was doing. No one did, save MacNab, and he couldn’t have taken his letter to Willa so soon.

Again he nearly started forward, but something in the way Joseph sat his horse, straight and aloof, held him back. Though it was a coin’s toss whether it was reproach or approval he read in that bearing, he couldn’t look away from the power of the Indian’s stare.

Look away, or move.

Was this what the hypnotizing stare of a snake felt like to a field mouse? The thought almost made him smile.

The spell was broken as Joseph raised a hand, laying it flat against the place where Neil had cut out the musket ball and stitched the smooth brown flesh together again. Beyond the forest, the sun sent its light spearing down through tree and mist, to glint on Joseph’s glossy hair as he dipped his head at Neil. Without visible gesture, he turned the spotted mare back into the trees. In an instant he was gone, leaving no more sign than a wind’s rustle where the leaves shivered in his wake.

Had it been Godspeed, then? Or good riddance?

Neil couldn’t say, though he thought there had been gratitude in the gesture.

With his heart thudding in his chest, he saw to his business, swung back into the saddle, and turned Seamus’s nose into the rising sun.

Experience warned him to clip its wings, but despite his efforts, hope once again soared in the chest of Joseph Tames-His-Horse, higher with every mile he’d trailed the Scotsman away from Shiloh. He had not expected the man to leave, not after he returned so soon from his wilderness wanderings. This time he’d gone south toward the white settlements, not north into the mountains. Could it be he wasn’t coming back? Had Burning Sky rebuffed him one too many times?

More consuming to his heart, more pressing to his mind, was another question. Did his going mean that he, Joseph, might yet have a chance to woo her back to the People?

That was the hope he tried to push down, to cover with the heavy stone of duty. No matter how things may have changed between Burning Sky and the Scotsman, there was still the deserter to deal with. And that deserter was behaving strangely.

For the past days, Crane had taken to hanging about the village, which was how Joseph came to observe Neil MacGregor’s going. But as he did not know what prompted the Scotsman’s departure, he did not know why Crane had changed his habits, why he seemed intent on lingering by the mill each day, as though he waited for something, or someone, to pass. Not until the sun had set did he mount his horse and return along the track that led west of the village to the stable and pastures of the big stone house, where before he’d spent the majority of his time, tending to the horses there.