The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (11 page)

She waited, too miserable to wonder what he was thinking. Or was he praying? A tiny seed of pity cracked open within her, and for an instant she wished she could be … stronger, surer.
Something
. But she was undone, unraveled, a seam left unhemmed.

After a bit he raised his head. “I’ll take you back,” he said flatly. “If that’s what you want.”

She bit her lip and looked away. “There’s nothing to go back to.”

“You’re sure? If this ain’t what you want—”

“It is. I … you …” She wanted to say she was grateful, but she hadn’t the words. Grief capped them like a well, holding them inside her.

She turned to see him rolling up his bedding. He gathered up the corndodgers to wrap in leaves and caught her eye. “Want to try again before we head out?”

She could only shake her head. She went to the stream and splashed her face, then set about ordering her hair. The ivory combs were still lodged in place, but few pins remained in the tangled curls. The pinner dangled behind one ear. She rinsed away the sick, fingered out leaves and
twigs, then plaited a simple braid and flung it over her shoulder, slipping the combs into one of the pockets now tied at her waist. Though there was none to see save her guide, who’d already had the privilege of watching her vomit, she covered the crown of her head with the pinner, securing it with the remaining hairpins.

He’d tied her cloak with his bedding, behind the saddle. “You wear this,” he said, draping the satchel with the corndodgers over her shoulder. “You’ll have it by when you’re hungry.”

An optimist, he was. Yet the gesture was kind.

Her mother’s box lay in the grass. Her eyes were dry as she picked it up, but she couldn’t still the trembling of her hands.

“I can tie that up.”

She looked away, uncertain. She felt she owed him … something, but couldn’t think beyond the moment and the monumental task of getting back up on that horse.

“I’d rather hold it,” she managed to say.

He didn’t object.

Biting back a groan, she climbed onto the horse’s back, settled the box in front of her, tucked the torn petticoat around her knees. Her guide looked up at her, as if to say something more, then seemed to think better of it. He took up the horse’s lead and the rocking sway that had haunted her dreams resumed.

They camped at sunset, high in a rocky fastness skirted by firs, having seen no sign of another human being since the man with the mules and dogs, just an endless parade of trees and rocks and the occasional deer or rabbit bounding out of their path. But what trees, some with girths wide enough to hide a horse behind, leafed so thick they turned midday into twilight beneath their canopy.

Everywhere were birds. Woodpeckers bobbed from their path in flight. Eagles and hawks circled above, keening their wild cries. Ravens croaked at them from the tops of conifers, while down below grouse burst from the brush with a drumming of wings, and flocks of wild turkeys hurried up the mountainsides as they passed. Tiny flitting songbirds raised a constant chorus of trills.

Once, a great cloud of pigeons crossed over, blotting out the sky for minutes, rustling the air with their innumerable wing beats.

Tamsen winced as she slid from the saddle for the last time that day. Over and over in the blur of their up-and-down travels, she’d been forced to dismount where the going grew too steep or narrow to trust her perch on the horse. She was blistered, worn, and breathless—the latter due to her stays, which were never intended for climbing mountains or the great gulps of thin air needed for the purpose.

She sat on a shelf of rock and slipped off her shoes while her guide unsaddled the horse and hobbled it in scanty grass. Then he informed her he was going down the mountain to set snares in hope of getting breakfast.

“I’ll not go out of shouting range.” He caught sight of her heels, showing blistered and raw through holes in her filthy stockings.

She tucked her feet below her torn petticoat. He moved behind the rock on which she sat.

“Try this.” He was holding out a tiny jar stoppered with a piece of cork. “For the blisters.”

Tamsen took the jar. After removing the cork, she held it cautiously to her nose, expecting it to reek of bear grease or something as nasty, but it had a pleasant smell. Green was the best description she could summon.

“Neighbor of mine makes it,” he said, “out of her garden. It’s handy for burns and blisters. But best thing you can do is take yourself down to that runnel yonder and bathe your feet. Keep ’em open to the air tonight. Wait,” he amended, taking up the canteen. “I’ll tote you the water. Whilst I’m at it, strip off those hose. I’ll scrub ’em out.”

She blinked. “You’re going to wash my stockings?”

“No call for casting off good rags. There’ll come a use for ’em.”

While he was gone down to the stream they’d passed before stopping, she unrolled her hose, easing them over her heels, and slipped her garters into a pocket. When he returned with the dripping canteen, she had the stockings balled into a dingy lump even she’d have preferred not to touch. Seeming not to mind, he tucked them through his beaded belt, shouldered his rifle, and headed out to set his snares.

Tamsen spread her cloak in the least stony spot she could find and sat on it with her feet downhill in a patch of grass. She trickled water over them, rubbing gingerly to loosen the dirt. The cold water felt good. The salve, even better.

She replaced the cork, and for a mindless while enjoyed the novelty of bare feet and ankles. She didn’t think about Morganton. Or her mother. She watched the horse graze. It was a pretty creature, chestnut, save for a rump that looked as if someone had tossed a tattered white blanket over it. The horse had white on its face too, and sweet brown eyes.

“He’s a Chickasaw pony,” said her guide behind her, startling her out of a near doze. “Indians say they’re bred from horses left behind when Spaniards come through these mountains, long time back.”

Spaniards. Tamsen’s throat closed tight as images of her mother careened through her mind, memories tainted by violence and lies. Sarah Littlejohn Parrish hadn’t been Spanish after all … or had she been? A Spanish slave? As dusk gathered and clouds came up over the mountains, covering the few stars already burning in the luminous sky, Tamsen stared at the backs of her hands as if they belonged to a stranger.

They had corndodgers again for supper. Though it seemed wrong somehow to eat, she choked down one of the dry cakes, then sought refuge in her cloak, only to toss and turn at the painful pressing of her stays. The air had chilled. Her nose ran. Her feet ached.

Her guide said, “You awake?”

She rolled over, showing him her eyes in the firelight.

“Can I borrow your shoes?”

With no idea what he could want with her shoes, she sat up and handed him the battered things. As he reached past the fire to take them, a long howl pierced the darkness. She dropped the shoes at the flames’ edge. He was quick, dragging them out before they were more than scorched. It hardly worsened their condition. One heel was all but fallen off. The silk uppers were in tatters.

Another wolf answered the first. At the edge of the firelight, the horse nickered. The man spoke to it almost chidingly, in a language unrecognizable:
“Meshewa. Nooleewi-a.”

Tamsen edged closer to the fire. Her guide was doing something with the deerskin he’d gotten from the trapper. He sat cross-legged, firelight catching sparks in his strange eyes as, at a rustle in the brush or another howl, he’d look out into the vast dark that pressed in close. His hands stayed busy with the deerskin, cutting it with his knife. Other tools came out of his bags. An awl. Beeswax. A sturdy needle. Something coiled like thread, only thicker.

He made no attempt to engage her in conversation, though she was sure he knew she watched him. Had she not heard him speak it often enough, she could almost imagine he had no English. Though his coloring wasn’t an Indian’s and he claimed to be white, she might as well have thrown in her lot with one of that race. Was she one of that race? There was one place she might look for answers. She hadn’t yet read all the papers her mother’s box contained. But she wasn’t ready for the whole truth yet, or learning the box held only part of the truth, leaving her forever with questions unanswerable.

She shivered.

Golden eyes flicked to her. “Cold?”

He got up to put his blanket over her.

When she woke next in the lifting darkness, the first thing she saw
was his face in profile, very near her own. She’d scooted up against him in the night, despite having his blanket and her cloak and sleeping closest to the fire. He lay on that big black fur, face upturned to the fading stars, hands folded on his chest. One gripped his rifle.

She eased away and only then saw the moccasins tucked between them. They were small and neat, with a center seam stitched of that thick thread, and the flaps … They were cut long enough to cover her ankles if she tied them up.

Sight of them caused a tightening in her chest, separate from the stone of grief lodged there. She reached a hand from her warm nest to stroke the supple leather, finding it buttery soft. Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back and pillowed her head on her arm and watched the man beside her sleep while morning swelled around them, closing her eyes when the tightening of his lips warned her he was about to open his.

A mist had risen by the time Jesse checked his snares, cleaned the rabbit caught in the night, and made his way back up the mountain. They’d been blessed in the weather, though it was a blink and a sneeze till autumn. Some of the hardwoods were already tipped in red. The sun and warmth couldn’t last.

Left to himself, he could be down on the Watauga in a day. Two at most. With Tamsen it would take longer, but not by much. Ought he to make it take longer? Could she bear it if he did? The shattered look of her, sick with grief in the clearing by the stream, haunted him still. Even had she been whole in spirit, she wasn’t used to such exertion or rough living. He knew it by that blue gown, her soft hands.

He’d left her sleeping, yet to find the moccasins he’d made. Would they please her?

He was wondering that as he came over a rise into their camp and
stopped in his tracks. She was kneeling by the fire with her back to him, and the mist wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t see she’d taken off the jacket of her gown and was tugging at the laced-up thing she wore beneath it.

Stays. He’d seen them on the bushes at their neighbor’s cabin, washed and spread like the wings of a desiccated bird. He’d never seen them on a woman. Was she trying to get at the ties in back? How tight did women lace those things? For a second or two, he admired her trim shape, then cleared his throat. “You needing help with that?”

With a yelp, she scrambled back into the jacket, thrusting her arms into the sleeves. She flipped her braid over her shoulder, head bent to fasten up the front.

“Guess that’s no,” he said under his breath.

While he skinned the rabbit and whittled green sticks to spit it, she fidgeted, trying to adjust her various layers without seeming to do so. Finally she gave it up and reached for the moccasins he’d made. Halfway through tugging them on, she glanced at him from under her lashes.

“Thank you for these.”

He nodded, watching her through drifting smoke. “Best wrap your feet in the hose. Loose-like, to cushion things. There’ll be some walking again today.” The hose had dried, spread by the fire in the night. “I got a pair of breeches you can slip on under that skirt.” She shook her head at that, and her cheeks pinked up. “We’re headed higher today. Weather can turn in a blink this time of year. Could get chilly.”

Still no. She’d maybe change her mind, later. At least she seemed to like the moccasins. She stood and took a few steps. He noted she didn’t limp. “I put the fancy shoes in the fire. Hope you don’t mind.”

“They were ruined.”

It was all the talk he got from her while the rabbit cooked.

Keeping company with Cade all these years, he was used to silent stretches. But he’d seen enough of Tamsen Littlejohn before her mother’s death to guess this wasn’t her usual way. He trusted she’d talk when she
was ready. That she hadn’t cried a tear since leaving Morganton … that concerned him.