The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (37 page)

Janet sat on a bench beside the door, slumped as if a yoke straddled her shoulders, mouth opening, closing, opening again.

Alarm raced through Jesse’s veins.

Bethany came to the cabin door, looking more wretched than her mother, who was still sitting there struggling for words. “It’s my fault, Mama. Let me tell it.”

“Someone tell me—and quick,” Jesse ordered. “So I can be after her.”

Janet’s face lost its color. “Tate’s already looking, Jesse.”

“Looking? You mean she’s
lost
?” He clenched his teeth. “When did she leave? Why did she leave?”

“Today, long about dinnertime.” Bethany stepped into the dogtrot, tears welling in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to tell her.”

“What did you tell her?”

Bethany flinched at his tone. “I thought she
knew
.” Her face crumpled in misery.

He was making this worse with his anger, upsetting them more than they already were. Drawing a calming breath, he got himself in control, though dread was nearly choking him. “Start from the beginning and tell me what’s happened.”

Janet found her voice first. “We were all in the barn this morning, sorting feathers from a brace of geese. Tamsen slipped out—we figured she went to rest a spell, but she didn’t. She went over the ridge.”

“Alone?”

“It weren’t long afore we knew. Beth went after her.”

“I found her at your cabin,” the girl said through her tears.

Jesse wagged his head, looking from mother to daughter. “Then where is she? What was it you told her?”

“About you being accused of her ma’s murder. I overheard Pa telling Ma, and I know you meant to keep it hushed, but I thought surely Tamsen knew.” Bethany’s eyes pleaded. “After I told her, she bid me start for home, so I did.”

“You
left
her?”

Bethany’s eyes welled afresh. “She said she’d be along behind me, only she never came.”

It occurred to Jesse to wonder if the girl had spilled that secret on purpose, but he dismissed the notion. The anguish in her face was real. He paced to the edge of the dogtrot, gripped by bewilderment and rising
panic till he thought he would be sick. Sweet fool woman! What was she doing?

“Jesse, do you know where she might’ve gone?”

Janet’s question made his head stop spinning long enough to realize he did know. Or had a notion. “She’s gone to the Teagues’. Gone to try and … She’s gone to try and clear my name. That has to be it.”

Janet rose and came to him. “But if that’s so, Tate ought to have found her on the trail, afore she reached Sycamore Shoals, and been back with her long since.”

Anxiety and need pierced like shards through his vitals. Blood pounded in his head, building pain behind his eyes and a red haze before them. Where was Tamsen?

“I’m so sorry,” Janet said, mouth trembling. “You trusted us to look after her and—”

“Don’t.” He couldn’t hear their apologies. Not now. “Just pray. I’m off to find her, or Tate.”

Please, God, the both of them
, was his own prayer as he vaulted into the saddle and turned his tired horse back toward Sycamore Shoals.

Two miles from the cabin, Jesse met his neighbor coming back along Greenbird Creek, horse lathered, Tate grim-faced.

“I rode to Sycamore Shoals, asked all over the place, even the fort—you must have passed by while I was there, else I’d have seen—”

“But Tamsen?” Jesse interrupted.

“No one’s seen hide nor hair, or heard tell of her neither.”

“She might be making for the Teagues’.”

Tate said exactly what his wife had. He’d have found Tamsen on the trail, still close to home, if that was so.

Another explanation, one Jesse had held at bay till now, made a
full-on assault on his mind and heart. Perhaps she’d started that way, but someone else found her first.

After all this time?

His dream. The one where he’d failed to pull her from the swollen creek. It
had
been a warning. And he’d been an utter fool ever to have left her, to trust in her safety.

“They’ve got her, Tate. Parrish and Kincaid. I don’t know how, who helped ’em, but they’ve got her.”

It was all he could do to draw his next breath.

Tate nudged his horse close and grasped his arm. “I aim to help you, Jesse. You left her in my care, and I won’t rest till you get her back. Now let’s get on, retrace my steps, watch the trail close with the light we got left. Maybe you’ll see something I missed. Don’t give up hope.”

Hope, it seemed, had given up on Jesse. Dusk was thick by the time they reached Sycamore Shoals, having carefully scouted the trail. But there’d been hard rain that day, and if Tamsen or anyone else had left sign of their passing, it was long since washed away.

Still, Jesse went through the tiny hamlet, asking the same folk Tate had asked if they’d seen a young woman, dark of hair and eye, traveling through on foot, maybe in company with two men, one of them red of hair … But not a soul had seen her, alone or in such company—as if the trail or the creek or the weeping sky had swallowed her whole.

Jesse left the trade store, mind in a turmoil, body strung like an empty bow. He saw Tate coming from the smithy, but knew before his neighbor reached the rutted yard that he’d found no sign of Tamsen either. “Nothing, Jesse. I think we best ride for Luther—”

Tate broke off when Jesse clamped a hand to his arm, looking past him at a sight that drove a spike of cold down his spine. Coming into town
from the west, at the head of his mule train, looking dead set on passing through fast, was a scruffy little trapper with three spotted hounds at his heels.

Charlie Spencer should’ve known he wouldn’t get free of this Miss Littlejohn business so easy. Heaven—or the other place—had snared him in this coil and hadn’t seen fit to free him.

He’d left the Trimbles’ place as fast as he could load the mules, doubting whether anyone inside that ramshackle cabin noticed his going. Too busy arguing over what to do with the girl now they’d got her. They’d put her in the lean-to. Locked her in with whatever stores they kept. Shut her up still shivering, wet through, hands bound behind her back. They’d taken off the gag, but only so Parrish could give her a chance to bow to his will, demanding she swear up and down to Kincaid she was still fit to marry, soon as the man made his appearance.

Charlie had stood in the cabin doorway as Miss Littlejohn—pried off the horse and dragged inside—made an attempt at defiance. She’d plenty to say to Parrish, but forced through chattering teeth, it proved a pitiful show. While Dominic Trimble saw to his brother, who dropped onto a cot in a corner, fevering up from the pistol shot the girl had dealt him, Miss Littlejohn told Parrish what he might do with his demands, Charlie growing colder in his gut with every word she stuttered.

“Can you p-possibly imagine I would give you any f-f-further authority over m-m-me, after what you d-did to—”

That was the last she got out before Parrish clamped a hand over her mouth and tossed her into the lean-to, ordering Trimble to deny her food, water, warmth, anything else she needed. Charlie had been too stunned to protest, but not Trimble.

“Hang on. Soon as I see to Seth, I mean to get her to Brose. Y’all can
fight it out what you do with her after that, but let her out by the fire else she’s liable to sicken. Plus I gave her a clout for shooting Seth. Might be her head needs tending.”

“And it’s plain wrong, treating her that way,” Charlie finally interjected. “She’s your daughter.”

Parrish dealt with him first, striding across the cabin and shoving him bodily out the door. “What I do with her is no longer your concern. You’re finished here.”

Charlie stumbled backward but righted himself and drove his shoulder into the cabin door. Too late. A bar had dropped into place on the inside.

He’d stood back, listening as Trimble and Parrish argued. Trimble wanted to take Miss Littlejohn straight to Jonesborough. Parrish was adamant she stay where she was till she proved amenable to marrying Kincaid—if the man would have her.

Miss Littlejohn wouldn’t prove amenable. Charlie had seen that right off. What was the man going to do with her once he figured it out? And where was this Jesse Bird, the one who’d taken her from Morganton? Hunting for her even now? Lying dead somewhere at the Trimbles’ hands?

While they argued, tended to Seth, and ignored the girl they’d gone to such lengths to find, Charlie knew someone had to go for Kincaid, and fast.

That someone was going to have to be him.

By time he had the mules roped and ready, the dogs were milling, eager for the trace. It was late in the day. He’d be traveling through the dark, and it was looking like to rain again. Maybe snow. He was sorry for the mules, forced on another sidetrack. But that poor wet shivering girl … He couldn’t leave and do nothing for her.

He reached Sycamore Shoals for the third time that day as dusk was falling. As he passed the trade store, the thought of stabling the mules and hiring a horse for the trip crossed his mind. On impulse he turned down
between the store and the smithy, trying to think where he might find a horse.

Out of a shadow along the building’s side stepped a man, blocking his way.

Charlie drew up short, pulling back hard on the bridle of the lead mule. Two of the dogs were near. They stopped in their tracks, one of them growling as the man approached. He was young, clad in buckskins, in need of a shave. What light remaining between the buildings showed his face with its thin-bridged nose and eyes of a peculiar shade, almost golden.

Even in the failing light, having seen him only once before, Charlie Spencer would have known him anywhere. He was bigger than Charlie minded, harder looking, fierce as a hawk about to snatch its prey.

“Hold on, now.” Caught between relief and alarm, Charlie backed away—and ran smack up against another body bigger than his own. A second man had moved up from behind, swift and silent. Charlie hadn’t time to draw a breath before his arms were grasped and wrenched up sharp behind him.

Rage and fear had Jesse by the throat. “Where—is—she?”

Spencer’s eyes bulged, filling with fear. “I … She …”

Jesse’s hand was around the man’s neck before thought of putting it there registered. “You tell me where she is, or so help me I’ll wring it out of you.” The dogs were bristling, whining. The mules stood placid, dumb and patient. Jesse started to squeeze, feeling tendons give beneath his fingers. “You got seconds to start.”