Lori Benton (19 page)

Still, if it contained all it once had … there need be no returning to Philadelphia. No humiliation. No defeat.

“Yah, Joseph!” Willa suddenly exclaimed. “You were meant to be getting meat for me. That is all.”

With his soul sending up silent
hallelujahs
to the Almighty for this restoration, this miraculous reprieve, Neil had paid scant heed to the rising voices nearby. Joseph had taken the children off his horse, and Willa had put aside her musket and come to stand before the Indian, her face gone a bloodless white.

“Their parents are lost to them. They have no white kin to take them
in.” Joseph’s tone was reasoning. “They wish to find our people, but the girl is—”

Willa took a step back, shaking her head. “You must find some other way.”

Frowning, Neil moved to peer around the wall of horseflesh to better see the children, black haired and grubby, clasping each other with skinny arms while Cap sniffed at their knees. Glaring at Joseph Tames-His-Horse, the older of the pair, a boy, spoke a hot stream of words Neil recognized as Mohawk.

Joseph turned to him. “I have not lied to you. She is one of the People. Our sister.”

The girl, dressed in what suspiciously resembled his own spare shirt, turned her face to Neil—a small face marked with suffering. As her dark eyes met his, something tugged at his heart, making him want to gather her in comforting arms.

The boy dropped his scowl to the collie, sniffing at the girl’s skirt. With a muttered oath, he kicked the dog.

“Hey, now,” Neil began, just as the girl’s small face crumpled and she slumped against the boy, who grabbed her to keep her from falling.

Neil moved swiftly, catching the girl as she slipped from the boy’s grasp, bending low to support her. She’d fainted—he felt the sag of her full weight, slight as it was, and his knees met the ground as she sprawled across his lap. The impact jarred his injured wrist, but he hardly heeded it. There was only the dirty little face fallen limp against his chest, and the child’s ragged skirt rucked up to bare a wound deeply scored from calve to ankle, broken open and bleeding.

The girl roused almost at once, looking up at him with eyes full of pain. His heart wrenched again. “ ’Twill be all right, lass. We’ll see to it. Ye’re safe with us.”

Willa stood as if rooted, face set and white. He looked a wordless plea at her and saw in her eyes a battle being waged.

Whatever the conflict, she put it aside and with a jerk of her chin said, “Bring her inside.” She strode past him toward the cabin but halted at the door. “Wait. The light is better on the porch. You will need light, yes? I will bring a quilt.”

He held the injured girl propped across a knee until Willa returned and spread the quilt from her loft pallet between the door and the steps. Joseph lifted the child from Neil’s arms, careful of her bloodied leg, and carried her to the quilt.

Neil knelt beside her, while the boy hunkered at her shoulder, distrustful eyes on him. “What will you do to my sister? She’s only seven. You can see she’s afraid.”

Not the only one, Neil guessed, though the boy was putting up a brave, if belligerent, front. “I’m going to see to this wound. With a bit of help.”

Willa had vanished into the cabin again, but she was filling a bowl with heated water, gathering linen for bandaging, moving now with reassuring efficiency. He turned to find Joseph on the porch step, watching. “My saddlebags—I’ve things in them will help.” Or he did have, he amended silently, catching the boy’s unrepentant glare. “Will you bring them?”

Joseph went to oblige.

Willa returned with the water and stepped across the girl to kneel beside her. “The wound is filthy. No wonder it is broken open.”

The child shrank from her, scooting toward Neil until she was nearly in his lap again. Her brother stared darkly at Willa’s face.

“What is wrong with her eyes?”

“There’s not a thing wrong with her eyes.” Neil shot Willa a quick smile, which she didn’t return. “What’s your name, lass?” he asked the girl, a hand to her tangled hair. She didn’t seem to mind his touch, but she darted a look at her brother, as if expecting him to answer for her.

The saddlebags came down with a thump beside him.

“She is called Pine Bird,” Joseph said. “The boy is Owl. That is what
the woman who was their mother called them. Their father’s name was Kershaw. By him, they were called Margaret and …?” Joseph’s gaze drilled into the boy, who gave no name but Owl.

Willa held a soaked wad of linen at the ready. “The wound is deep at the one end. Can you close it?”

“I mean to,” Neil said. “Now then, Margaret, Willa’s going to clean your wound while I see what’s left of my supplies.”

“I did not steal that horse.”

Already deep in the bags, Neil glanced up to find Owl looking at him, narrow eyed.

“I never accused you of it, lad. Ah … God be thanked.” He extracted the small case of medical supplies he’d brought along to doctor himself and the horse as need arose. The weight of the polished wooden case bolstered him.

“Did ye by chance mislay anything ’twas
in
the bags?” he asked the boy, with the mildest hint of wryness.

“It’s all there. Except the food. And my sister is wearing—”

“Yah!”

The girl’s cry of protest startled them. Neil reached for her but not quick enough to prevent her kicking out with her sound leg and catching Willa’s forearm, knocking the wad of bloodied linen from her hand. She grasped the girl by the ankle.

“Aki! Satahonhsatat, tha’tesato:tat.”

Both children stilled, gaping at her. Willa stared them back, her face fierce in its sternness.

Neil put a hand to her shoulder. She was trembling. “Willa, if this is upsetting you, Joseph can help—”

“Yes. He can.” Willa released the girl and went into the cabin.

Neil stared after her until the child’s fingers touched the wrappings he still wore on his wrist and hand. Her eyes looked up at him, trusting.

“I’ll need to stitch it shut, lass,” he said, unwinding the linen from his wrist so he could better use the fingers of that hand. “ ’Twill hurt, and I’m sorry for it. Can ye be a braw lassie and verra still, and let me do what I must?”

His accent tended to thicken at such moments. He doubted she’d understood half of what he’d said, but when it came to it, she clenched her eyes and her brother’s hand and endured the suturing without a sound, though tears streaked the grime on her cheeks and tremors shook the flesh beneath his hand. Then he was knotting the last of the stitches, and the worst was over. For the lass. He was aware now of a sharp throb in his right wrist, which had borne the brunt of the work.

“Right, then, wee Maggie. Go on and cry now—”

The girl reached skinny arms for him; by instinct he gathered her in, one-handed, looking over her tousled hair at her brother, who was staring at him with eyes far older than the rest of his face.

“She has not been called Maggie,” the boy said, “since the redcoats killed our father.”

They settled the children in the cabin’s front room and fed them what remained of the midday meal. Neil sat at the table, resting his arm. He wanted to see to Seamus, but Willa had taken their dirtied bowls and the kettle to the spring to scrub, and he didn’t wish to leave the children alone. From the corner of the room where the quilt had been spread, they stared at Neil, the boy with open distrust.

Hearing Willa’s voice in the yard, he went to the door. She stood near the horses, kettle clenched to her chest, confronting the Indian, who was lifting the mare’s saddle to the ground.

“Do not ask it of me, Joseph. I have no heart in me for this.”

The Indian straightened. “It is not only I who ask.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are Wolf Clan,” the Indian said, sorrow in his look. “That should be reason enough.”

Willa bowed her head over the kettle. Neil saw her throat work in a swallow. “ ‘A bruised reed …’ ”

Joseph touched her cheek. “ ‘Shall he not break.’ ”

Neil’s heart jumped at the scripture, his own soul quickening to its promise.
And the smoking flax shall he not quench
. Aye, he thought, uncertain still as to the cause of Willa’s pain, but wanting her to see past it—as apparently Joseph was hoping she would do.

Willa leaned her cheek into his large brown hand, but her face remained pale, pinched, and more vulnerable than Neil had ever seen.

“Until the leg is healed,” she said.

“Awiyo.”
A tender exultation chased the sadness from Joseph’s face. “It is good.”

Willa’s voice was flat. “We will see.”

Neil stepped back inside the cabin before they caught him listening. In a moment Willa brushed past him and went to hang the kettle at the hearth. Her face was composed now.

“You will want to see to your horse,” she said to him. “Go, then. I will plant no more today.”

Neil hesitated, glancing at the children on their pallet. The boy glared, mistrusting them equally. The girl watched Willa with half-fearful eyes. “Ye’ll be all right, then?” he asked.

Willa did not turn to him. “Yes. Go.”

He went, his last glimpse that of the girl’s clinging gaze.

Joseph had removed the roan’s saddle and burdens and was busy going over the horse as Neil had done before, checking for injury. Ignoring a proprietary twinge, he crouched beside his field desk, unwrapped the oiled canvas, and opened the lid. His paints, the white clamshells he used for
mixing them, the good paper stock, pencils, ink, quills—it was all as he’d left it.
Oh, the joy
.

“Those children in there found this horse wandering alone.”

Neil tipped his head back to see the tall Indian was through going over his horse. “So I gathered. It strayed when I took my fall, before Willa found me.”

As he stood, Joseph grunted. “It is missing a shoe. The hoof is sound. I do not think the horse is bad lame.”

“There’s a smith in Shiloh.” Neil began to see the shape the rest of his day was to take. It meant leaving Willa and the children alone, unless Joseph planned to linger for a while.

He wondered at the depth of her distress over the children. Certainly their arrival was unexpected, and it was reasonable to assume two children to look after were the last thing she needed. That didn’t seem sufficient to explain her upset. Or that poignant scene in the yard he’d witnessed. Was it because they were Mohawks?

“It is not even three moons since her children were taken.”

Joseph’s startling, low-spoken words worked themselves into Neil’s brain but found no purchase there. “Her children? She’d bairns?”

Surprise flickered in the Indian’s eyes, and wariness. “Two daughters. She has not told you of them?”

Neil knew of a husband. Willa had as much as admitted to one the day Richard Waring rode into the yard. But not that she’d borne him children … daughters. Dead but months past?

He started for the cabin.

Joseph’s hand clamped around his arm, stopping him. “I should not have spoken. I thought she must have told you.”

Neil pulled free. “How old were they, her daughters?”

At first Neil thought the Indian would say no more. But at length, he relented. “One was six winters, the other not yet two. That is all I will say.
Let her say more if she chooses. I must build a better shelter for the animals, now that you have your horse back.”

Joseph moved away. Neil caught him up as he reached the chopping block and wrenched free the felling ax. “I’d like to help.”

Black eyes above chiseled cheekbones regarded Neil, their assessing scrutiny settling on his wrist. “There is no need.”

The eyes had said something less kind. Or so Neil thought. That enigmatic face could be as stern and closed as Willa’s.

Swallowing his smarting pride, he watched the Indian head for the trees beyond the cabin, armed with his rifle, ax balanced easily across one broad shoulder, determination—and a not-so-subtle disdain—communicated with every fluid stride.

At least he meant to stick close by for the present. He would pray Joseph found the words to help Willa past her heartache, to show these children kindness. He’d have tried to speak such words himself, but the Indian was right. Unless Willa chose to share her grief, he hadn’t the right.

Behind him Seamus nickered, reminding him of other needs, and his blessings. The weather was fine, the sun high and warm in the vaulted blue sky, and he’d just recovered all that he had lost.

“Aye, then,” he said. “Let me fetch my satchel and we’ll be off to see MacNab.”