Bonds, Parris Afton (3 page)

Brant swung down from the sorrel. "Your father
got room for four more, Dorothy?"

"Ain't no travelers through here since last
week, Brant." The scout said something Anne could not hear, and the girl
laughed. "I'll tell paw you're here," she said, running on ahead.

The inside of the cabin was almost as desolate as
the surrounding area outside. But at least there was the welcome warmth of
crackling pine logs in the native stone fireplace. Brant and Ezra, who lit up a
corncob pipe once he was seated at the long table, were immediately drawn into
conversation by Dorothy's father, George Hamlin, a grizzle-haired man with a
watermelon paunch and tobacco-stained teeth.

Anne sought the three-legged stool before the
hearth. Her thin silk blouse clung to her skin like icy fingers, and she
thought she would never be warm again. Delila bustled about her like a mother
hen. "Let me take that jacket, chile, and brush off that dried mud. Jus'
look at yo' po' hat! Yo' mammy would give up her ghost if she thought ah wasn't
keeping you looking like a lady."

Only Dorothy was quiet as she moved efficiently
about, frying ham, boiling hominy, measuring out the ground coffee, which Anne
was to learn was not true coffee but parched corn and acorns. All the time the
girl's alert eyes darted from Brant to Anne to Ezra, and always back on Brant, as
if she were trying to determine what connection the elegant lady had with each
man. Feeling useless and uneasy under the girl's scrutiny, Anne rose and went
to her. "My name is Anne," she said softly. "Could I―help
you in any way?"

The girl's gaze dropped to Anne's left hand and the
narrow gold band on her third finger. Anne understood. "Anne Maren. My
husband's pastor of the Adelsolms settlement."

The girl's smile was suddenly open. "Name's
Dorothy."She turned over the slice of ham sizzling in the lard. "You
could mix up that batch of cornbread for me, if you like."

Glad to have something to do, Anne took the
earthenware bowl and wooden spoon and began to stir. Within seconds the coarse
cornmeal was streaked across her face and powdered in her hair. She stopped to
wipe the meal's dust from her eyes, and the bowl slipped to the floor with a
crash. Guiltily Anne looked up from the mess at her feet to find all eyes
turned on her.

"That's all right, ma'am," Dorothy said
quickly. "I'll take care of it. Why don't you settle yourself at the
table? We're just fixing to eat anyhow."

Anne could well imagine how scarce food could be
there in the winter. And to waste it through her clumsiness―she could
only be glad the men had resumed their conversation as she took a seat at the
table.

Across from her Brant shook black tobacco flakes
from a small leather pouch onto a thin square of paper. "We ran across a
party of them about ten miles out," he told Dorothy's father.
"Driving a milk cow and her calf."

George Hamlin grunted. "Those were Lemmuel
Todd's animals. His wife's milk done dried out―and their babe's sickly
with the croup. Can it git any worse?"

As Dorothy set the plates on the table, Ezra laid
aside his pipe and said, "The Kronks could decide to carry off you instead
if the winter lasts much longer."

The host spit out a diarrheic stream of chewing
tobacco that hissed as it spattered in the fireplace. "That's how come
we're posting lookouts on shifts now."

"We spotted Willie just north of the salt
lick," Brant said, surprising Anne, who was not aware they had passed
within sight of another human being until they reached Brazoria. Then Brant
surprised her further. "Isn't Willie the one who was courting you when we
were last here?" he asked Dorothy with a teasing smile.

The girl blushed and began to spoon out the hominy.
"Willie's just a boy."

The dinner talk turned to the new line of forts Sam
Houston was having built and continued with the problem of the new Indian
hostilities until the acrid tallow candles sputtered in their tin holders. Then
the bedding arrangements were made, with the men occupying the main room and
Delila sleeping in the loft.

Anne gratefully climbed into the one bed, moldy
though the feather, ticking was. At her side lay Dorothy, who she knew listened
intently for Brant's steps outside the cabin as he checked the horses.

For herself sleep came instantly. A troubled sleep
of Brant's hand at her mouth, a hand that changed to a gleaming knife wielded
by a hideous Karankawa tearing away at her flesh. Anne bolted upright in the
bed with a scream hovering in her throat. She glanced around the darkness.
Beside her Dorothy slept peacefully. Anne lay back down again to sleep, only to
scratch the rest of the night at the bedbugs that attacked her.

Dawn came too early for Anne. The damp morning air
seeped through her clothing the moment she set foot outside the Hamlin cabin.
Stars still twinkled faintly in the gray pink sky.

With the Brazos River at their backs, Brant led the
party in a due northwestern direction, heading for the San Bernard River. The
sky remained overcast the rest of the morning, but in spite of the wintry
weather, Anne found herself enjoying the day's journey.

They left the forest of loblolly and longleaf pine
behind and traveled across an endless, treeless prairie. That same morning she
had her first sight of the shaggy mammoth, the buffalo. An awesome sight, the
herd stretched as far as the eye could see, blackening the prairie like some blight.
Their breaths steamed the frigid air, and their collective movement through the
tall grass sounded like distant thunder.

There were other sights to captivate her attention,
to make the day pass faster: flocks of geese that completely obliterated the
sky, fields of wild violets and bluebonnets, blooming as if spring had arrived.

"Not unusual at all, Miss," Ezra told her.
"Tomorrow a warm front could move in from the Gulf hot enough to fry a
tortilla. Texas weather's as fickle as a painted woman."

However, even these sights began to pall, and she
lost interest with each weary mile they covered. Brant refused to halt for the
midday meal but pushed the group onward at a steady pace. Anne was already sore
in the muscles of her buttocks from the previous day's excursion. And now she
was cold, hungry, and thoroughly out of sorts.

Since she knew Brant would not give in to her
demands, she tried another tack. Dropping back alongside Ezra, she told Delila
to ride ahead in her place. "Ezra, I'm not feeling well. Perhaps it was
the soda biscuits we had this morning. But I feel as if I'm going to―to―"
she hesitated in describing such an indelicate ailment.

"Upchuck?"

Anne closed her eyes with an inward sigh and nodded.
"Precisely. Do you think you could possibly persuade your Mr. Powers to
halt―it would only be for a very short time. To rest―and get out of
the cold wind." She looked around, realizing there was no shelter from the
cold, no trees, no bluffs―only the limitless prairie with buffalo grass
as high as a horse's flanks.

"Don't think I could, miss." Beneath the
stubby, curly lashes, the giant's eyes twinkled. "There's rain coming
'fore nightfall, and Brant's hell-bent on reaching the forests of the San Bernard
River first."

Anne looked upward. "Why, the sky is overcast,
but there's not a thunderhead in sight, Ezra." She ought to know a storm
cloud. She'd seen enough of them roll in off the Atlantic.

"That may be so, but all the weather signs say
rain."

"Such as?"

"For one, miss, the spider web in the Hamlin
lean-to this morning. It was low and short and thick-like. If we were gonna
have dry weather, it would have been thin-and long and high."

"That's all well and good, Ezra, but it still
doesn't alter the fact that I―" Anne broke off. Even if she could persuade
Ezra to halt for a rest, there would still be no way under heaven she could get
around Brant.

"If you'd chew on a blade of grass miss,"
he offered, "it might settle your innards." Anne winced. "No―I
think I'm going to be all right, thank you."

Ezra was right. For as the afternoon wore on, and
more and more trees, mostly red elm and sweet gum, dotted the prairie, bilious
black clouds rose on the horizon. The icy wind blew with the force of an
Atlantic hurricane, whipping Anne's cloak about her like giant bat wings. Her
nose was numb and, she was sure, red, and her eyes watered. Her fingers hurt
from clenching the reins so long in the cold. Even Delila grumbled, her
mutterings carrying on the wind.

We'll die out here, Anne thought morbidly. Freeze to
death! And all because of one man's stubbornness.

At last, when she did not think she could stay
upright in the saddle a moment longer, Brant called a halt beneath a
magnificent stand of pine and cedar elm. On a rocky hillside within a
pine-scented grove which broke the blustering wind, he dismounted and crossed
to Anne.

"I can dismount myself, thank you!" she
snapped.

He shrugged. "Suit yourself, lady."

Anne unhooked her leg from the sidesaddle and slid easily
to the ground only to have her legs buckle beneath her. Brant caught her and
effortlessly raised her to her feet. Embarrassed, she stared straight ahead at
the leather lacing of his buckskin jacket. "I―I didn't realize I was
so stiff from the cold."

"Yes'm."

Anne glanced up to find the firm lips just a quiver
away from a smile. "Well, it wouldn't have happened," she retorted,
"if you hadn't forced us to―"

"Miz Anne, stop that arguing and git yo'self out
of the cold!" Waddling behind her, the old woman propelled Anne with an
affectionate shove toward the lee of the trees.

Anne half sank, half fell on the bed of pine needles
and watched with apathy as the two men went about apparently prearranged tasks―Brant
unsaddling the horses and Ezra gathering dead sticks and brush. Even Delila
seemed to fall in with the appointed jobs and began digging around in the
saddle bags. With a gleaming grin she produced a battered coffee pot. "Now
all we needs is water."

"The San Bernard is about two hundred yards the
other side of this hill, Miss Delila," Ezra said, stacking the firewood in
a mound.

"Ah'll be back, baby," she told Anne with
a glowering look toward the men, as if warning them to leave her charge alone.
"You just settle yo'self and rest."

"I'll go along," Ezra offered.

"What fo'?" Delila asked suspiciously.

Ezra turned his bearded face to the darkening sky.

"We'll need wood for a break-storm should be
here in 'nother hour or so. Besides, Miss Delila, I don't want you to frighten
off any Tonks lurking out there."

The whites of Delila's eyes grew round. "Glory
be, mister, are them savages gonna be bother'n us?"

"Oh, you're safe―those Kronks don't like
dark meat."

His laughter reverberated through the trees, and
Delila said, "Git along with yo'self!" but a chuckle escaped her as
she plodded off behind the big man.

Anne wrapped her arms about her knees and watched in
the lowering light as Brant began building a fire. He moved swiftly, sure of what
he was about. From somewhere out in the encroaching darkness came the howl of a
wild animal. Anne shivered, and small bumps sprang up on her skin.

Brant raised his head, listening.

"What is it?" she breathed.
"Indians?"

After a moment, he shook his head. "A wolf.
Lobo, most likely."

"How do you know it's not an Indian ―imitating
a wolf? Otto―my husband―told me that sometimes Indians imitate
animals to fool settlers."

"The call of the wolfs hard for an Indian to imitate.
The trill of a lark or wood thrush would be more likely."

"I see," she said, half in doubt.

As his hands continued to rub the steel against
flint, the tinder of charred linen ignited, and the wood burst into blue flame.
Brant settled back on his haunches. In the light of the fire the brown eyes
glinted with flecks of gold, reminding Anne of a cat's eyes. "Can you
handle a pistol?"

Anne blinked. "Why―no." She nodded
toward the cold metal contraption at his hip. "Will it be necessary ...to
shoot one of those things?" Life in the civilized Bridgetown had
accustomed her to the courtly rapier for a gentleman's weapon―nota bowie
knife. Had inured her to velvet and plumes, the clothing of a true gentleman―not
the buckskin and sombrero of the frontiersman before her.

"You won't last here, Mrs. Maren. This land's
not for the aristocratic, the delicate. It'll age your smooth skin, beat down
your fine bones. So that in another ten years you'll look forty instead of-what
is it-twenty."

Anne's eyes narrowed to pinpoints of gray fire.
"I will survive, Mr. Powers! Because beneath this delicate exterior, as
you call it, is a will of iron determination―born of my Scottish parents
who settled a land as raw as this. I may stumble along the way, but I'll get up
again! So don't try to tell me I don't belong here!"

"Bravo!" Ezra called out, coming up behind
them with Delila. "Brant sometimes forgets himself."

"So I've learned."

"Once ah gits this coffee a'steamin', ya'll
feel a sight better," Delila promised. Over the popping of the pine knots,
Ezra cooked the ham Dorothy had given them, while Brant put together a thatch
work of pine strips layered atop boughs of the fragrant evergreens.

After the four travelers finished eating they
settled back to watch the flickering coals of the dying fire, each with his own
thoughts to occupy him. Ezra pulled out his pipe and idly blew circles of
drifting smoke while Brant finished off the last of the acrid coffee. Delila
worked with her bamboo sticks laying them out in a haphazard fashion. She
muttered, rearranged them, and then looked from Anne to Brant with a frown.

"Miss Delila," Ezra said. "If you're
in that business, how about conjuring up for me a woman with lips like ripe strawberries
and eyes as bright as a Texas stars?"

Delila closed her eyes and moved the sticks once
again. She opened them, fixing her owl-like gaze on the older scout. "Yo'
woman, Mister, her skin be as dusky as the summer peach. But all 'bout her is
death."

Ezra feigned a shudder. "As long as it's not my
death."

Anne's parents had always treated Delila's obeah
lightly, and Anne had adopted the same attitude, but for a different reason.
Subconsciously she feared, if she knew the future, the future could control
her. But now she wanted to know. To ask Delila if there were any hope for
herself and Colin. If Colin were written on the pages of her future. And she knew
she would never ask. As long as she did not know, there was hope―there
could be dreams.

Brant rose, and the shadow he cast from the fire's
flickering light fell over Anne, dispelling her thoughts of Colin and
increasing her resentment of the scout that much more. "Don't tell me―let
me guess," she said, looking up at him with a smile that was as bitter as
vinegar. "You want us to mount up and ride out again in the dark."

Brant tossed out the dregs from his coffee cup.
"Better get bedded down―the storm'll hit in another twenty
minutes."

Delila took one look at the break Brant had
constructed, which was six or seven feet square, enough room for the four
travelers to lie on their sides―and no more, and glared at the two men.
"Ah's gonna sleep in the middle, gentlemen, and Miz Anne on the
outside."

"Now, Miss Delila," Ezra remonstrated,
"don't you trust us?"

  "Ah don't trust no man, Mister―black or
white meat. Ya'll good for nutin scoundrels!"

Ezra roared, his laughter echoing the sudden roll of
thunder. Anne flinched as lightning streaked across the sky, and found Brant's
eyes watching her with amusement, as if he took pleasure in any discomfort
caused her.

While the two men left the camp to make one last
check of the area, Delila repacked the saddle bags and Anne even fell to
helping as she spread out the saddle blankets beneath the break.

When Ezra returned first, Anne rose and crossed to
him. "Do you still think we're in danger of an Indian attack?"

"Could be. Doesn't pay to underestimate those
scalp lifters."

"And Mr. Powers. Is he an Indian also?"

Ezra knocked the bowl of his pipe against his palm.
"Well now, miss, he is―and he isn't."

"What exactly does that mean? Hasn't he ever told
you anything about his past?"

"That's something you never ask of a man in
Texas, Miss."