The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (30 page)

“Or a courtroom brawl?”

Jesse pursed his lips and shrugged, then seemed to put the Trimbles out of mind, searching her face as if he sought to read her thoughts. “You still worried about Parrish and Kincaid?”

“Not to lie awake at night, but yes.” If only they could discover whether her stepfather had given up the hunt without revealing themselves in the process.

“Just remember, when I go—”

“Stay close by the Allards.” She smiled as she said it, wanting to be brave for him in this one thing at least, because the thoughts going through her mind—thoughts she was too much a coward to share with
this man who’d risked so much to help her—were all about wanting even more from him. If her stepfather gave up hunting her, could they have a chance at a true marriage? Could she become the kind of wife a man like Jesse Bird needed?

She reached for the powder horn he held ready. “I’d best fire this pistol a time or two more, if I aim to be a sharpshooter before you come back from Chota.”

“If Cade hadn’t taken you away from the Shawnees, would you have become a warrior?” Tamsen’s voice rose above the creek’s chatter as she strode behind him, returning from the shooting.

Jesse paused on the path, letting her catch up. She hadn’t worn a cap today. With the hood of her cloak thrown back, her hair was curling up around her face with the damp of coming rain on the air. He admired her hair—everything else about her too, but that hair was a glory, near-black and shiny, pinned up off her slender neck and looking so heavy he wondered she could carry her head so proud.

“I mightn’t have had the chance,” he said in answer to her question. “I told you we left the Shawnees not long after the fighting with Dunmore’s troops?” He steered her ahead of him on the path so she’d hear without his having to shout. “The Shawnees were forced to talk peace. One price of that peace was handing over their children born white.”

“Their captives?”

“Aye.” He tightened his grasp on the goose he’d shot and frowned at the trail ahead, sifted over with russet leaves. “But that don’t mean what you might think. Some were glad enough to go back. Most weren’t.”

“But why not?”

“Anyone the Shawnees adopt is well treated, cherished like the family
member they’re meant to replace. Don’t matter if they’re white, black, or red.”

“Like you, for Split Moon and Red-Quill-Woman?”

Behind her Jesse smiled, pleased she’d remembered their names. “Aye. Those adopted young, like me, didn’t recall their white kin. Or if they did, most had no inclination to stop being Shawnee. Some were grown and married, with children of their own.”

She glanced back at him, looking as if such a thought had never crossed her mind. “And the Shawnees gave them up that easily?”

He tensed, then reminded himself there was no way she could understand. In his heart he would always straddle the red world and the white, even if he never saw another Shawnee face, but he was getting on in the white world mostly on account he let folk forget he’d ever been anything but a frontier hunter, who happened to have a half-Delaware man looking out for him as a pa would do.

“Weren’t nothing easy in it,” he said, keeping his tone even. “Many of the Shawnees were desperate for peace. Too many were dead. Hearts were on the ground in those days.”

Every day since, he reckoned. Peace hadn’t lasted long, despite all the Shawnees had given up for it. Peace never did last, it seemed.

At a lip of stone jutting across the path where the creek made a little fall, Tamsen stopped and looked at him, the tip of her nose pink from the chill. “Hearts on the ground?”

“You understand what that means?” he asked, then looked into those dark eyes of hers. Of course she knew.

“But Red-Quill-Woman. Didn’t it put her heart on the ground when you and Split Moon failed to come back from that hunt?”

“She’d died the winter before.” He’d been orphaned for the second time that day Split Moon’s chest was blown open by a white hunter’s musket. That day Wolf-Alone saved him.

“What would you have done,” Tamsen asked, “if you’d been one the Shawnees were forced to give back?”

Jesse stepped off the rock and turned to help her over the drop with his free hand. He didn’t let go when she was steady on her feet, just went on down the trail, reaching back and clasping her hand, like it was a thing they’d done countless times. She didn’t pull away.

“I’d have run off, hidden till it was safe to come back.” It amazed him he could sound normal with her small chilled hand in his and his heart banging away with the thrill of it. “Done whatever I could to stay with the People.”

“You hadn’t any white family to go back to.”

Her hand was warming in his. He thought of twining their fingers together but feared to go too far.

“Not without knowing the name I was born with,” he said, thinking of that ritual on the edge of sleep. Always the memories ended in a canoe on a broad river, brown shoulders all around him, strong arms dipping paddles, feathers in scalp-locks twirling in the breeze. In the wake of that canoe lay the unknown country, his first years on earth, a dark brink that drew him to stand at its edge and gaze into the void. If a bridge existed across that blackness, he’d yet to find it. He wanted to. Even if his admitting to it was likely what upset Cade enough to drive him away.

“Truth to tell, in my heart of hearts, I’m still that little Cat-That-Scratches. What think you of that?” He looked back to see her lip caught between her pretty teeth. She wouldn’t return his look, but she still held his hand.

Possessing his soul in patience was a lesson coming hard. He didn’t want to be talking about himself, but of her. Her soul was a country he longed to explore and know as well as he did every stone that pocked that creek path. “Now I’ve told you something of my past, it’s only fair I get to ask something of yours.”

“What do you want to know?”

They were nigh the cabin clearing. He glimpsed it through a fringe of red sumac and wished they’d miles yet to walk.

“How ’bout, what’s the first book you ever read? Or had read to—”

They’d come out of the trees. With the corn harvested, the line of sight up to the cabin was unobscured. Two horses stood outside the stable. Sitting in the cabin’s open doorway was Seth Trimble.

Jesse halted, letting go of Tamsen’s hand to grasp the butt of the rifle slung across his back. Two horses. One Trimble.

Thunder rumbled as Seth caught sight of them. He shot to his feet.

“Company,” Jesse muttered.

Tamsen’s face showed no more pleasure than Jesse felt. He started up the slope with the dead goose dangling and heard her following.

Seth called out something, a greeting perhaps, but thunder murmured again; whatever he’d said was lost. He took a step toward the side of the cabin, then checked, looking back at them approaching.

Unease gripped Jesse’s chest.

From somewhere out of sight, there came another sound. A sound like a muffled scream.

A sheet of red slashed across his vision.

“Stay clear of this,” he said, catching Tamsen’s puzzled gaze. There was no time to explain. He slung the rifle off his shoulder, dropped the goose at her feet, and broke into a sprint.

Jesse was halfway up the slope before Tamsen unfroze in a shattering of comprehension. Leaving the dead goose on the ground, she hurtled after him. Ahead she saw Seth Trimble hesitate, seeming torn between racing for his horse and meeting Jesse head on. When Jesse was nearly upon him, he broke and ran for the stable.

Jesse let him go, disappearing around the cabin.

Thunder grumbled, louder now, reverberating in her bones. A raindrop pelted her scalp. Then another. Sounds of struggle met her in the yard. A shout. A hollow thud as of something hitting the log wall. Then Jesse staggered around the side of the cabin, half-dragging Dominic Trimble, and she saw in Jesse’s face what must have sent Seth running—the warrior Jesse might have been, furious and implacable.

She didn’t wait to see more but ducked around the cabin on the opposite side. Bethany Allard lay sprawled on the ground by the woodpile, petticoat and blond hair awry. “Bethany!”

The girl’s mouth hung open, spilling drool and blood down a smear of dirt, as though her face had been shoved into the ground. She was bloodless save for that torn lip and a red patch across a cheekbone swelling up to close one blue eye.

“It’s all right now. Jesse’s got hold of him.” The girl was shaking as Tamsen got her to her feet. Rain pelted down, hard fat drops that struck the yard in dusty spurts. They rounded the cabin to the thud of fists on flesh. Dominic was fighting back, blinking away blood from a cut through one eyebrow, hurling every foul name she’d ever heard at Jesse, who ducked and struck in focused silence.

Bethany leaned on Tamsen, limping toward the cabin door. Dominic saw her. Worse expletives spilled from his mouth until a roll of thunder, and Jesse’s fist, silenced them. The blow landed under Dominic’s jaw, jarring his head back with the click of teeth. The man went to his knees.

Jesse glanced her way. “Take her inside!”

In that instant of distraction, Dominic launched off the ground with a snarl. Caught in the chest by Dominic’s shoulder, Jesse staggered back but didn’t fall.

Tamsen pushed Bethany through the door while behind her the combatants grunted under another exchange of blows, breath coming hard. A shout of satisfaction rose.

On the threshold Tamsen spun, dreading what she’d see. In those seconds her back was turned, Dominic had gotten hold of Jesse’s knife, the long hunting blade he wore at his belt, and sprung away with it. Where Jesse’s rifle had gone she didn’t know. He pulled free his hatchet and beckoned, grinning with a fierceness that jolted fear and admiration through her.

Movement in the distance caught her eye. It was a horseman, down at the base of the slope, halted at the very spot she’d left the goose lying. A horseman with a rifle raised, trained on the cabin yard. Had Seth not ridden away as she’d assumed, but only to where he could get a shot at Jesse? They were rain soaked now, Jesse and Dominic. Hair plastered. Faces streaming. Their feet had churned the earth to mud.

Tamsen opened her mouth to scream a warning when she recognized the horse. It was Cade across the empty field, leveling his rifle. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled a second before gunfire cracked.

Bethany was frantic. “Who was shot? Who?”

Tamsen had gotten the girl to the back room. Bethany sat clutching a
blanket to herself while Tamsen dipped a rag in the water basin on the tick beside them and, by the light coming through the open door, tried to clean the blood and dirt from her chin. “No one was shot. Cade fired a warning to run Dominic off. It worked.”

Bethany’s eyes welled. She winced as the tears stung the darkening weal across her cheekbone. The eye above was swollen half shut, but the other held enough pain and humiliation for two. “Why’d you have to be so nice?”

Tamsen’s hands stilled. Then, smiling sadly, she went back to cleaning the girl’s face, careful of her wounds. “When I needed it, someone was kind to me.”

Bethany’s lashes lowered. “Jesse?”

“Yes.”

A shudder went through the girl. Her shoulders curled inward. “I’m sorry.”