Judith E. French (18 page)

“You mean to kill him?”

“And take his scalp.”

“You can’t. That’s horrible. It’s barbaric.”

“He killed either Beaver Tooth or Fat Boy, or both of them. He hacked the scalp locks from their heads while they still breathed.”

She pressed her cheek against his bare chest and closed her eyes. “How can you be certain?”

“I just am.”

“But even if he did, you don’t have to be his judge. Let someone else—”

“I am the moon dancer. I am the judge. I will lift his hair and divide his scalp lock between the mothers of my dead friends in token of my judgment.”

Nausea rose in Fiona’s throat. She pulled away from him in horror. “No. You couldn’t. It’s not civilized. If you do that . . . if you do such a terrible, savage thing, I won’t stay with you. I couldn’t stay with you anymore.”

His bronze features hardened; his eyes glittered like black ice. “You would have killed him if he’d tried to take your weapon from you. True?”

Fiona shuddered, remembering the smell of Matiassu’s body and the malevolence in his gaze when she’d held him at bay. “To save my life ... or yours,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t murder another human for revenge.”

“How many times have you killed your own father in your heart?”

She winced. “That’s different. You can’t confuse the issues. I may have thought I wanted my father dead, but when I saw him ... Damn your red soul, Wolf Shadow. I’m a healer. I save lives—I don’t take them. I mean what I say. I won’t condone murder and”—the image of a dripping scalp rose in her mind—“mutilation.” She swallowed against the sour taste in her mouth. “I love you, but I won’t stay with you if you murder Matiassu.”

“And I will not be controlled by a woman. If you will not stay with me, you will not,” he answered coldly. “I am the moon dancer. And I must do what I must do.”

 

Wolf Shadow seemed a stranger to Fiona in the days that followed. Kitate departed on his quest to the Seneca Village, and Fiona and the shaman returned to Tuk-o-see-yah’s camp. They traveled by night and slept by day, and not once did Wolf Shadow make love to her.

On the second day of their journey, Fiona’s monthly bleeding began. She couldn’t help feeling relieved. Despite her love for Wolf Shadow, she wasn’t ready to carry his child.

Her old doubts and fears returned full force. She began to ask herself if she’d traded her self-respect for the pleasures of a virile man’s bed. Why had she believed that she understood him . . . that they could find happiness together despite their vast differences? Why had she allowed herself to trust a man when no man had ever given her reason to trust before?

Wolf Shadow was a pagan—a barbarian—little better than Matiassu. She had sinned when she’d lived with him without benefit of the Church, but repentant sinners could receive forgiveness. If she left him . . . if she went . . .

Where? Where could she go? Her pride refused to consider Stewart’s offer. She’d die before she accepted help from him.

Timothy O’Brian. The rough frontiersman had said he would stand before a priest with her. Should she cast her lot with him? She didn’t love him; she didn’t know him. But many marriages of convenience occurred in Ireland. If a girl owned a patch of land and needed a man’s strong back to work it ... If a man had motherless children and needed a woman to care for them ... A marriage, a real marriage blessed by the Church, would be something to hold on to. Her children would be legitimate, their souls safe from the dangers of purgatory. Her own soul would be safe.

Reason said that she should leave Wolf Shadow while she could. Leave him and take one of her own kind to husband. It was the logical thing to do.

But she didn’t love O’Brian. She loved this great savage moving through the trees ahead of her like a ghost. She loved the sound of his laughter and the proud way he walked, as though he owned the earth.

She loved the things Wolf Shadow did to her body, the way he made her feel ...

All of her life, medicine had come first. She had wanted to be a doctor, to heal the sick and comfort the dying. She’d wanted to bring new life into the world and ease pain. She could do that if she went with Timothy O’Brian ... no less than she could among the Indians. Timothy’s settlement had no doctor. Hadn’t he said so?

A mosquito buzzed annoyingly around Fiona’s head, and she slapped it just as another bit her bare forearm.

Wolf Shadow looked back at her. They were paddling a canoe upriver, which was not nearly as easy as flowing with the water’s current, she’d discovered. His eyes rested on her for a few seconds, and her gaze locked with his.

Instantly Fiona was struck by the sorrow in his eyes. This was not a powerful shaman watching her, but a man ... a man who loved her deeply and knew that their relationship hovered near the breaking point.

“The mosquitoes are bothering you,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He leaned forward on his knees and drove the paddle deep into the sparkling water. The birchbark canoe dipped slightly and turned toward the east bank. Wolf Shadow guided the little boat carefully against the shore, removed his moccasins, and leaped out in the shallow water. “Stick your paddle straight down into the sand and hold it,” he ordered. When she obeyed, he climbed the bank and vanished into the thick growth of wild grape vine and foliage.

In a short time he was back with a handful of crushed, flowering pennyroyal. “Our people call this squaw mint,” he explained as he got back into the canoe and rubbed the plants between his palms. “It will protect you from insect bites.”

Fiona held the canoe against the bank as Wolf Shadow moved to the center of the boat and began to rub her arms with the oil from the plants. “Uhhhg,” she complained. “It smells awful.”

He smiled. “Would you rather stink or scratch?” He knelt before her and sensually anointed her throat and the back of her neck.

Her skin tingled where he touched her. She tried to ignore his callused fingers as they stroked and massaged the warm oil onto her body. His hands cupped her chin, and he brought his face close to hers. Fiona leaned away from him, and the birchbark canoe threatened to tip. “No,” she protested weakly, “don’t do that.”

His firm lips covered hers, and she felt the old, familiar thrill race through her body. “I promised to take care of you,” he whispered huskily. “Do you think I want to see you covered with mosquito bites?”

The tips of his fingers dipped beneath the neckline of her deerskin vest, making her breathless. “I don’t want to ...” She trailed off, not certain what it was she didn’t want to do. She gulped and drew in a deep breath. Her chest felt as though the weight of the river was pressing on it. And wherever his fingers touched her, her skin began to burn. “Ohhh,” she sighed. “Don’t ...”

His hands moved down to the first rawhide tie that held her vest together. Fiona felt her nipples pucker against the inside of the deerskin. Suddenly the vest seemed too tight.

“I know you’re angry with me,” he murmured.

“Very angry.” It was hard to remember that she wanted to leave him when his warm tongue was tracing her bottom lip and his fingertips were touching the inward curves of her sensitive breasts.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He took hold of the second tie, and the paddle slipped through her fingers. He reached out and caught it with his left hand, then lowered his head to nuzzle the dampness between her breasts.

Fiona was trembling. She opened her mouth to protest, to tell him no, to tell him he couldn’t do this, but nothing came from her throat. Ribbons of sweet, hot flame spilled through her veins.

The third tie parted, and he pushed open her vest. His mouth found her nipple, and he slowly circled the areola with his tongue, then took her swollen bud gently between his teeth and suckled it until she moaned with pleasure. He began to stroke her other breast, rubbing the warm oil into her skin, teasing the nipple to a hard knot of yearning.

“You must stop,” she whispered. “I can’t. This ... this is my woman’s time. I’m bleeding.” “Shhh,” he soothed. “There are many ways to love, my Irish Fiona. Let me share them with you.”

Then, somehow, she was lying in the bottom of the canoe, and he was on top of her. His long, silken hair brushed her cheek as she arched against him, entwining her legs with his. Her hands moved over his body, stroking, caressing as she moved her hips against his, thrilling to the hard, hot length of him.

The canoe drifted into the current and floated slowly downstream, but neither of them noticed. Neither cared. For an hour they were lost in shared rapture, and the sweet, wild notes of the tangled green forest were their love song.

D
espite the overwhelming joy of that afternoon of bliss on the river, Fiona continued to struggle with her doubts for the remainder of the five-day journey back to Tuk-o-see-yah’s camp. Should she leave Wolf Shadow or not? Would she be better off among her own kind—with Timothy O’Brian or someone like him? And if she did decide to leave the Shawnee, would Wolf Shadow let her go?

When they reached the village late one rainy afternoon, Wolf Shadow’s sister was waiting for them with a desperate message.

“Moonfeather needs you to come to Wanishish-eyun at once,” Willow explained. “Ross Campbell’s Englishwoman is near giving birth. Moonfeather and Cami went to assist in the delivery, but Moonfeather’s runner says the mother is bleeding. The peace woman fears this birth is beyond her skill and that both mother and babe may die. She wants you both.”

“Will you come with me?” Wolf Shadow asked Fiona after he’d translated Willow’s plea. “Anne Campbell is a good woman—a woman you should know.”

Fiona spread her hands impatiently. “If she’s in danger, why are we wasting time?” Her personal problems receded to the back of her mind. She was a physician, and she was needed. Nothing else mattered. “You know I never deny a patient,” she continued fervently. “If I can help, I must go.”

“You would be safer here,” Wolf Shadow reminded her. “Roquette’s threat is not an empty one.”

“I’m going.”

He nodded. “As you say, if you can help, you must go. We will take warriors with us, but there are many places where death may find us between here and Wanishish-eyun—Fort Campbell, as the English call it. We travel south by canoe, and forest lines the river on both banks.”

“How far is it?” Fiona asked.

“As the eagle flies? As the wolf lopes? As the river takes us?” He shrugged. “Two days maybe? Who can tell?”

“That far? Then we may be too late already.”

“Messenger come when sun is high,” Willow said in her softly accented English.

Fiona glanced at Wolf Shadow. “They sent a runner? Why would they,” she asked, “if we can travel the river?”

“The river current will carry us south,” he explained. “There are rapids and a waterfall to go around. We can move much faster than someone coming north.”

“I come,” Willow said firmly. “My husband, Niipan, he come. If Ross Campbell’s woman dies, the peace woman will need me. I be of her family now.”

“It might be better if you stayed in the village,” Wolf Shadow said to his sister. Draping an arm around her shoulder, he took her aside and told her about Matiassu’s visit and the bounty the Frenchman had placed on their heads. “You’re newly married,” he concluded. “You and Niipan should be taking joy in each other, not placing yourselves in jeopardy for my sake.”

Willow smiled up at him and touched his cheek with a fingertip. “When have you ever done anything but lead me into trouble, little brother?” she teased in their own tongue. “The day I stay at home and hide under my rug for a dog like Matiassu is the day you’ll see the sun come up in the west.” She turned to Fiona and squeezed her hand. “The sight of your ...” She struggled for the right English word. “Your face make my heart smile. I have happy to see you, my sister.”

Fiona smiled back. “And you, Willow. I’m glad to see you too.”

Niipan and Amookas—Fiona’s adopted mother-joined them on the village dance ground. Amookas greeted Fiona with warm cries of welcome and hugged her soundly. Despite Fiona’s embarrassment at such an emotional display, it gave her a good feeling, and she returned the embrace. Niipan merely nodded. By Shawnee custom, Fiona supposed she should consider the light-skinned brave some sort of brother. But Niipan wasn’t looking at her in a brotherly fashion; his sloe eyes were as suspicious as Willow’s had been when they’d first met.

“My mother comes also,” Niipan said to Willow, “and my father will not let her go without him.”

Fiona knew Amookas’s husband was a white man, a one-legged Scot who lived with the Shawnee. She’d seen Alexander Mackenzie from a distance, but she’d never spoken to him.

Alex limped toward them now on his handmade crutch, a musket slung over his shoulder and two flintlock pistols stuck under his belt. He was a gnarled figure in a faded kilt and ragged Scots bonnet, and he looked to Fiona as stiff and tough as old leather.

“Aye, I’ll go along wi’ ye, shaman,” Alex rasped. “I’m nay much help on the trail, but put me in a canoe and I can fight like the devil himself.”

Alex’s Highland burr was so thick that
devil
sounded like
div-al
to Fiona, and she could hardly understand half of what he said. “Damned if a mon won’t get auld sittin’ aroond, gettin’ fat as an auld squaw.”

“We’ll be glad to have you along,” Wolf Shadow said.

“So.” Alex peered into Fiona’s face. “This be the lassie what’s caused all the fuss. She’s bonny enough, I’ll gi’ ye that, shaman.”

Fiona mumbled what she hoped was an appropriate greeting and tried not to stare. She was frankly curious about the man who’d acted as a foster father to Moonfeather in her childhood. Wolf Shadow had told her that Alex Mackenzie was an educated man who’d taught her sister mathematics, French, and philosophy. Looking at Alexander Mackenzie, it was hard to imagine that he’d ever studied in Rome and traveled with British armies throughout Europe, as Wolf Shadow had related.

“Alex and your father were friends,” Wolf Shadow had explained one evening a few weeks earlier. “They came to our land together many years ago. After Alex lost his leg in a battle, he decided to remain here in America with Amookas and his half-Indian sons. He knew he couldn’t take his family back to Scotland, and he was happy here among the Shawnee. Cameron Stewart went back to Europe, but Alex stayed. Moonfeather learned much of the English world from what he taught her.”

Had Alex ever regretted not returning to Europe? Fiona wondered. He didn’t look like the sort of man who’d welcome personal questions—even from his wife’s newly adopted daughter. But it was clear from the looks he and Amookas exchanged that the couple still deeply cared about each other.

He-Who-Runs, Yellow Elk, and Two Crows joined the group along with other Shawnee braves from Tuk-o-see-yah’s village. Wolf Shadow decided that they would take six long canoes. The lead canoe and the last one would carry only heavily armed warriors. “We may still be attacked,” he said, “but if we are, we’ll be able to defend ourselves.”

Wolf Shadow took Fiona in his canoe. Yellow Elk knelt directly in front of her with his musket cocked and ready to fire. Two fierce-looking Shawnee braves paddled, warriors so scarred and menacing that Fiona was afraid of them, even though she knew they were there to protect her.

The first leg of the journey was made without incident. The canoes sped along the river faster than Fiona would have thought possible. They continued on through the night and into the following day, stopping only once so that they could all tend to their personal needs. The only other people they passed were a young Delaware brave and his wife coming upstream on their honeymoon journey. Except for that, the river was serene and beautiful, a joy to see.

It was early morning when they reached the head of the falls and had to portage the canoes overland. Here, the Shawnee doubled their vigilance. Scouting parties searched the woods before the women left the boats. And, as they followed the descending path toward the winding river below the cascade, everyone maintained a tense silence.

At the end of the trail as the canoes were being lowered into the water, they were ambushed. Niipan was helping Yellow Elk slide a canoe over the edge of the sandy bank when a shot rang out from the far side of the river. One of the men who had paddled Fiona’s canoe slumped forward and fell to his knees, a red stain spreading across his back.

The single shot was followed instantly by a barrage of musket fire. War cries echoed over the river as Wolf Shadow grabbed Fiona and shoved her face down behind a rock. He dropped to one knee, raised his musket, and took aim at a painted figure across the water. Fiona tried to lift her head, but he pushed her back down and pinned her there. His musket roared, nearly deafening her, but not so much that she didn’t hear a man’s agonized cry of pain immediately after the explosion.

Quickly Wolf Shadow began to load powder and shot to fire again. From her prone position, Fiona could see the Scotsman, Alex Mackenzie, half hidden behind a tree, firing one pistol after another as Amookas reloaded for him.

Suddenly Willow screamed a warning. Wolf Shadow whirled toward his sister, and Fiona scrambled up to see what had happened.

A whooping savage rose from behind the rocks at the base of the falls, drew back a bow, and aimed it at Wolf Shadow. In the split second between the time Fiona saw the man and the time he released the arrow, she recognized the face behind the Seneca warpaint. Matiassu! The arrow sprang from the bow as Wolf Shadow rammed his musket ball home and raised the gun to fire.

“No!” Willow shouted. As Fiona watched, Willow threw herself in front of her brother. Wolf Shadow’s gun went off, his aim destroyed by the force of Willow’s body. He caught his sister as a feathered shaft seemed to materialize in the center of her breast. Fiona heard her sigh as Wolf Shadow gathered her in his arms, and then her head fell back and she went limp.

He opened his mouth and uttered an inhuman howl of grief and anger, then lowered Willow’s body to the ground, drew his knife, and plunged into the river.

Matiassu turned and ran, leaping from boulder to boulder in his haste to reach the far side of the river. Mackenzie fired twice at Matiassu’s retreating figure, but both shots missed.

Yellow Elk and Niipan charged after Wolf Shadow, seizing him and dragging him down into the shallows as the other men in their party kept up a steady hail of shot. Wolf Shadow struggled against his friends, throwing Yellow Elk off. The shamari had gotten to his feet again when Two Crows leaped into the fray and held him until Yellow Elk could wrest his knife away from him.

Fiona could understand only bits of what Wolf Shadow’s comrades were saying, but it was plain to her that they thought chasing Matiassu across the river was nothing less than suicide.

As firing from the enemy became sporadic, Fiona ran to Willow’s side and knelt beside her. Any notion she might have had of administering aid was dispelled when she saw the extent of Willow’s wound, and realized she was dead. The arrow had pierced her heart and then continued all the way through her body. The ground around her was soaked with blood, and her face was pale and still. Weeping, Fiona closed her sister-in-law’s eyelids and held her hand.

Yellow Elk and Two Crows forced Wolf Shadow back to the shore. Niipan was openly weeping as he picked up his bride and cradled her against him. Alexander Mackenzie fired a last volley and stepped out of his hiding place. “Little Hoof has a graze on his arm, and Afraid of Bears is dead. If I count right, we’ve nay more casualties but the puir lass.”

Amookas began to wail a Shawnee death chant, a long, drawn-out keening that raised the hair on the back of Fiona’s arms. Leaving Two Crows with Wolf Shadow, Yellow Elk assembled the warriors and sent three to retrieve a canoe that had drifted downstream.

Wolf Shadow’s face might have been carved from granite. Fiona’s stomach turned over as she gazed at him. The husband she loved—the man who’d howled with grief at the death of his sister—had vanished, leaving only a savage Indian shaman with eyes that were cold and heartless.

Fiona reached out to take his hand, then shivered and pulled back. “Wolf Shadow,” she murmured.

At first he didn’t seem to hear, then slowly he glanced down at her. “Fiona? You’re all right?” His voice was so low she could barely understand him.

“I’m fine.”

“I should have killed him before,” he continued in Algonquian. “I let Matiassu live, and my sister has paid the price.”

She clasped his fingers; they were cool and damp, as motionless as Willow’s hand. She didn’t speak-there was nothing more to say—but hot tears rolled down her face.

“There are three dead Seneca on the far bank, and a man I used to know from Seeg-o-nah’s camp,” Yellow Elk said gruffly. “Do you want me to take Two Crows and Niipan and go after them?”

“No.” Wolf Shadow scanned the opposite shore with narrowed eyes. “We will give Niipan’s wife back to the earth, then take the women on to Wanishish-eyun. When they are safe with Campbell, we will go together and find Matiassu. And this time, I will feed his bones to the wolves and cast his soul into a marsh so black that he will never see the sun again.”

 

They reached Fort Campbell—the land the Shawnee called Wanishish-eyun, Thou Art Fair—that evening. Ross Campbell’s father, Angus, had built a walled trading post here on the river nearly fifty years before. Angus Campbell, who had inherited the Scottish title Earl of Strathmar shortly before his death, had married a Delaware Indian woman and purchased fifty thousand acres from the tribes. His only legitimate son, Ross Campbell, was now the earl. Although Ross had come into a fortune when he’d married Lady Anne Scarbrough, an English heiress, he continued to make his home at Wanishish-eyun.