The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (20 page)

“Hear me out first, Jesse. Please. Tamsen has told us everything, and there’s nothing you’ve done that strikes me as misguided, as best I understand this situation.”

That sounded good, but there was one thing the preacher couldn’t know. “With respect, sir, Tamsen didn’t tell you everything because she don’t know everything.” Though they were a distance from the cabin, he lowered his voice. “There’s more’n just a kidnapping charge hanging over me on account of all this. I’m accused of murdering her ma—by the man who actually did the violence that killed her.”

If he’d thought this might shock the preacher or convince him to
reconsider his decision, Jesse was disappointed. “That only confirms to me that allowing Tamsen to make this sacrifice for you is something I’m not prepared to do.”

Jesse started to speak, then clenched his jaw and pleaded silently with the man who’d been his and Cade’s preacher for years, had put him under the waters of baptism when he was still a boy.

Reverend Teague smiled, in sympathy rather than amusement. “Jesse, too much has happened to her in too short a time. Time—maybe a lot of it—is what Tamsen needs.”

“And protection.”

“True. But you can give her that without the pair of you committing yourselves until death do you part. Besides, this is her choice.”

Jesse sucked hard on his lip to keep from saying anything too hasty. Where had that fleeting sense of relief gone? He wished it back. “What does she want to do, then? Stay here with you?”

“As I explained to Tamsen, that won’t do. She’d be too easily found.” The preacher fell silent. Still thinking this through. Or maybe listening for the path to be shown him. Jesse reined in his impatience, let the man gaze at his wife’s sunflowers, and waited.

“Here’s my suggestion,” his preacher said at last. “Take her home. She’ll last longer in anonymity with you and Cade than she would here.” He gestured at the church, deserted now, but it wouldn’t always be.

Jesse thought of Tamsen sleeping in his cabin, sharing meals, seeing her day to day but forbidden to touch her.
Not married
. Cade would be by. They wouldn’t be alone all the time … but there were limits to a man’s strength.

Luther Teague was watching him close. “Do you feel more for that young woman than the need to protect her?”

What was the point in denying the obvious?

“Aye sir. I do. A heap more. Reckon I’m more’n halfway to being in love with her, to tell the plain truth.”

“If that’s the case, wouldn’t you rather marry knowing she loves you in return? She trusts you and seems to care a great deal that you not pay a price for coming to her aid.”

“But that ain’t love.” Jesse looked away, coming to terms. “Back in the mountains, when she came up with this scheme, part of me knew it wasn’t right. Not like this. I just …”

“Couldn’t say no.” Luther laughed softly when Jesse looked sharp at him. “I remember how it felt, meeting Molly.” His gaze grew sober again. “You’ll be called on to say no to yourself, many times over, if you take her home. My feeling is she’s lived a sheltered, probably restricted life till now. Though she’s of an age to have done so, she’s yet to learn who she is, what she wants in life.”

The words were ringing true, though Jesse didn’t like their tune.

“Can you give her that time, Jesse? Can you lay down your desires and be for her the friend, the brother, she needs, and no more?”

“I want to, sir,” he said hoarsely, then cleared his throat and said with force, “And I will. I’ll do all in my power to protect and provide for her, long as she needs me to. And I’ll ask nothing of her in return. I vow it, Reverend—God and you as my witnesses.”

For the first time since their arrival in his dooryard, Reverend Teague seemed taken aback, maybe a little amused, and—Jesse hoped he wasn’t imagining this part—impressed. But when he spoke, it was to caution, “This isn’t a wedding, Jesse. You understand that?”

“I do, sir. But I meant what I said, and I needed you to hear it.” To keep him honorable. Accountable.

It wasn’t the vow he’d hoped to make this day, but it was as binding as the other would have been. Tamsen would have what she needed, time to decide whether she wanted the life he could provide her—and him with it—or something else entirely.

He’d give her that freedom, whatever it cost in the end.

With the distance home too far to travel so late in the day, they’d spent the night with the Teagues, Jesse in the barn, Tamsen on a quilt by the hearth. The next morning Molly Teague accompanied them the few miles to Sycamore Shoals, where she went into the trade store and obtained for Tamsen items neither Jesse nor Cade could have known they’d need back in Morganton—things it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow for a woman to purchase.

Molly wasn’t much of a horsewoman. It had taken them the morning to reach Sycamore Shoals. Jesse and Tamsen ate a bite of dinner while they waited, concealed along the Stony Creek trace. Jesse was thankful for the reverend’s offer to extend him credit for the purchases, as well as his promise to keep Tamsen’s presence a secret and hold his peace about the murder charge. Luther Teague wasn’t happy about that last, but Jesse had insisted. Tamsen didn’t need another reason to feel obligated. If ever they married, he didn’t want it to be out of duty on her part, or fear, or anything but …

He hobbled that thought as Molly came riding along the trace with the purchases, bid them blessing, and they were on their way. Up the creek without a paddle, or much of a plan for what came next, it seemed to Jesse.

October was upon them. The air had a tang of autumn. The press of Tamsen’s arms around him as they rode double for the first stretch was both pleasure and torment. She didn’t ask where they were headed. He was too busy running the vow he’d made over in his head to say much of anything. He wasn’t surprised when she fell asleep against his back, about the time he turned the horse away from Stony Creek to make their way along a feeder creek, closed in by wooded slopes.

The sun was an hour or more away from setting, but the western slopes lay in dusk, when he felt Tamsen stir.

“Jesse? I need to find a spot.”

He looked ahead along the trail. “There’s a likely thicket, other side of that rock.”

She leaned around his shoulder, saw the boulder he meant, tall and mossy. “You know this place that well?”

He stopped the horse and slid to the ground, reaching up to help her down. “Every rock, tree, and bush along this creek. Every game trace, salt lick, and fishing hole too.”

She looked about her, still blinking sleepily. “Has this creek a name?”

“Tate Allard’s the only one farming up this way. He calls it Greenbird Creek. Guess that makes this Greenbird Cove.” He gestured at the tree-thick hills. “It opens up some, ’bout a half mile on, where Tate’s land starts.”

While she saw to the necessary, he filled the canteen.

She came around the rock at last, drooping with fatigue, still the loveliest sight he could imagine. It struck him with fresh wonder, as if she came walking to him out of a dream and might vanish did he dare touch her. But she was real, and plain worn from the journey they’d made, and now he was taking her to stay with him and Cade, and he couldn’t guess what the coming weeks would hold. She wasn’t his wife. Wasn’t his in any way, save to protect.

He cleared his throat. “Not much farther now. You want to walk a spell? Horse is tired, so I’ll be afoot.”

“I can walk.” She surprised him by wrapping her arms around the chestnut’s neck, patting the horse with affection, then planting a kiss on its velvety nose. He took up the reins and led on, hiding how much that gesture pleased him.

There was room on the trail to walk abreast, but minutes passed before she broke the silence. “What crops do you raise on your land, or do you raise cattle?”

“We grow some corn. It’s not our land, though, where we’re living.”

“You aren’t squatters, are you?”

“No ma’am. When we aren’t on a long hunt, we live on the edge of Tate Allard’s land—by his leave. In return we share what meat we bring in, drive Tate’s cows to market in the fall, lend our backs when needed. Neighborly stuff.”

It had proved a fitting arrangement for the past four years. Cade had raised him thinking it best not owning land, staying free to pick up stakes when game grew scarce or a place got too tricky to live in—like the State of Franklin was fast becoming.

Now, though, contrary notions were swirling through Jesse’s head, laying waste to old thinking—thoughts of digging in more permanent-like, acres of his own in a hollow somewhere, land he could make yield a living. He looked down at Tamsen trudging along in the clothes he’d borrowed and the moccasins he’d made, dark hair falling in a thick braid, sun-glossed features set in weariness. Was she disappointed he hadn’t land of his own?

“I’m thinking …,” he began, but stopped. Thinking he’d left the Watauga country content getting by the Indian way, with enough to eat and some to share with his neighbors. Thinking he’d come back more a white man than he’d ever been, with a heap of new concerns on his shoulders.

She cut her eyes toward him. “Thinking what?”

“Lots of things, but never mind. Let’s not think beyond getting home so you can rest.” He couldn’t be sure but thought he heard her mutter “amen” under her breath.

The hollow opened up as Jesse said it would. They passed a sloping field standing in corn, fenced with rails. Beyond it, forest rose again in a leafy
wall, running up to the crest of a ridge where the trees were tipped in gold, save for a natural bald midway up catching the westering sun.

It was a wild, isolated place where squirrels and jaybirds protested their passage and the tracks of deer and bear crossed the dim trail. Once, passing a break in the trees, she glimpsed smoke drifting over a rise and supposed it was the home of Janet Allard, to whom she must return the pecan-brown petticoat and gown as soon as she could ply her new needle.

At Sycamore Shoals, according to Molly Teague, all the talk had been about the Jonesborough courthouse raid. She’d heard no mention of a missing woman, abducted or otherwise, or talk of men called Parrish or Kincaid while she’d procured yards of striped homespun, bleached linen, thick-ribbed stockings and other sundries, including the sturdiest, ugliest pair of shoes Tamsen had ever owned, all wrapped inside a quilt behind the saddle.

After she saw the smoke, the trail curved back into forest, climbing along the meandering creek that tumbled over stones and deadfalls, lively and pretty. The sun was setting, and her legs burned with the strain by the time they emerged into a clearing nestled between the shoulders of a low mountain. Trees ringed three sides of the clearing. A cornfield edged the fourth. Where the ground rose toward a wall of forest stood a cabin built of peeled logs, squared and fitted.

It was smaller than the Teagues’ cabin, with a door in the center and a covered window to one side. Because the land lay lower to the west, the cabin caught the burnished light of sunset, making it look as if it hadn’t lost the luster of new-cut wood. She licked her lips, aching for the comfort of a feather tick—though straw would do, she’d not be picky—but hesitant to mention one.

They came first to a stable, just up from the creek bottom. Jesse stopped, untied the quilt bundle and handed it to her. He began unsaddling the horse, while she stood swaying, yawning. He was about to lead the horse into the stable when he noticed.

“Go on up; have a look at the place.” He gave her a half smile. “I think we left it tidy, but don’t hold me to it.”

His eyes told her he wasn’t worried, but she began to be—not about what she might find inside that cabin. What sort of role was she meant to play in Jesse Bird’s life now? She was a guest, she supposed, but that notion didn’t sit right. If the reverend hadn’t talked them out of marrying, this might, in some ways, have been easier. More straightforward, at least.

Clutching the quilt bundle, she followed a path up to the cabin door, pulled the latch string, and pushed her way inside.

Her first reaction was relief. While the stale muskiness of hides lingered, the place didn’t smell too bad. And the floor wasn’t dirt. Puncheon logs spanned the space, fitted with hardly a crack between. Leaving the door open for light, she stepped inside.