Ride the Fire (2 page)

He reached for his pistol, which sat primed and ready on the wooden floor beside the tub, wrapped his fingers around its polished handle. It was a reflex born of six years in the wilderness. He was no more aware of his action than he was of breathing.

The footsteps passed.

His grip relaxed, and he began to doze in the steamy water. Doze only. He never slept, not deeply. He didn’t want to dream.

The water was still warm when the sound of quick, light footfalls roused him.

She was back.

The door to the tiny room opened, bringing a rush of cold air and the rustle of skirts.

Nicholas opened his eyes, watched as she approached him. She was young, not yet twenty, he guessed, and pretty. Her dark hair and skin revealed her mixed ancestry—probably the daughter of a French trapper and his temporary Indian wife.

“Aye.” Now it was time for pleasure of another sort.

Without ceremony, he stood, dried himself with the linen towel, walked over to the small bed. She had removed her gown and lay passively on her back in her chemise, a tattered bit of cloth that might once have been white. She parted her thighs, bared her small breasts, drew one rosy brown nipple to a taut peak, smiled. It was a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Then her gaze came to rest on his scars. Her smile faded.

“Was it terrible,
monsieur?”

It was over in a few minutes, his seed spilled in a pool of pearly white on her belly. Nicholas lay staring at the timbered ceiling, while she washed all trace of him away in the cooling bathwater. Neither of them spoke. A vague dissatisfied feeling gnawed at his gut. When had he become the sort of man who would take pleasure with a pretty woman, even a whore, without even knowing her name?

Normally, he tried to forget the past. But now he wondered when he’d last made love to a woman, when he’d last devoted himself to giving a woman pleasure heedless of his own? His mind stretched back through the emptiness of the past six years, back through the nightmare that was Lyda to Penelope.

Sweet Penelope. Fickle Penelope.

He tried to conjure up an image of her face, failed. They’d been engaged to marry when he’d ridden away to war with Washington, but when she’d learned he had been taken by the Wyandot and was believed dead, she’d waited all of two months before marrying someone else. When he had finally escaped and made the long journey home to Virginia, he had arrived to find her quickening with her husband’s child.

“What was I supposed to do, Nicholas? Was I to wait for you? For how long? We all believed you dead!” And, indeed, he
was
dead.

He had tried to go on as if nothing had changed, to return to his old life. His parents, overjoyed at his unforeseen return, had done all in their power to help him. But nothing had been able to silence the screams that haunted his nightmares or restore the spirit that Lyda had so expertly wrenched from his body. Hatred for the Wyandot had consumed him, but no more than hatred for himself. And when he’d awoken from one of his nightmares to find his hands fast around his little sister Elizabeth’s throat—poor Elizabeth, only sixteen, had heard him cry out and come to comfort him—he’d known he was no longer fit to live among those he loved. He had packed a few belongings—a bedroll, his pistols, his rifle, a hunting knife, a change of clothes, powder and shot—and had saddled his horse and prepared to ride away, hoping the wilderness would finish what the Wyandot had not.

But his mother had awakened and, standing outside the stables in her nightgown, had begged him to stay, tears streaming down her face. “Please, Nicholas, don’t go! You’ve just returned! Give us a chance to help you, son!” Her words, the desperate tone of her voice, had almost been enough to stop him. He did not wish to cause her further pain. But then he had remembered Elizabeth’s frightened face, his hands wrapped tightly around her throat. He might have killed her.

He had climbed into the saddle, steeled himself against his mother’s tears. “I regret to inform you, madam, that your son is dead.”

Then he had urged his horse into a canter and ridden west, away from home, away from war, away from memories. He’d ridden over mountains, across rivers, through forest and grassland to the great mountains in the far west that no other Englishman had seen—but never fast enough or far enough to escape himself.

He had not yet found death, but in the vastness of the wilderness and the rhythm of the seasons, he’d found some measure of... if not peace, then forgetfulness.

“Pardonnez moi, mademoiselle. Je crois queje vous dois votre
paye.”
I
believe
I
owe you your fee.
He rose from the bed, still naked, and strode to the corner where his peltries lay in a bundle. Quickly he worked the knots and unrolled the bundle, his hands moving deftly over the soft furs, searching.

He released the marten pelt he had been about to give her, pulled free the white wolf instead. Much larger, much more rare, its value far surpassed that of the marten pelt. He stood, handed it to her.

She gaped at it, then at him, her brown eyes wide.

“M-merci, monsieur!”

Nicholas felt an absurd momentary impulse to apologize or explain himself. There had been a time in his life when he would have asked her what had happened to make her sell her body, when he might even have tried to help her find a better life. But those days had long since passed. The truth was, he no longer cared.

“De rien.”
It was nothing.
And as she hurried out of the room, wolf pelt clutched to her breast that was what Nicholas felt.

Nothing.

The geese!

If it was the same vixen that had harried them yesterday, she would shoot, and this time she wouldn’t miss. And if it were Indians or renegade soldiers?

Her mouth went dry.

Quickly, quietly, she crossed the wooden floor of the cabin that was her home, lifted the heavy bar from the door and slowly opened it, dread like ice in her veins. Outside it was still dark, the first light of dawn only a hint in the eastern sky. She peered past the door toward the poultry pens and saw a small honey-colored fox dart into the underbrush. In a warm rush of relief, Elspeth stepped quickly onto the porch, raised the rifle, cocked it, fired. A yelp, followed by silence, told her she had hit her mark.

She stepped back inside long enough to put down the rifle, put on her cloak and slip into her boots—she had taken to sleeping fully clothed since Andrew’s death, but that didn’t include boots—before going outside to see what damage had been done.

The vixen lay dead in the bushes. Its teats were swollen with milk, and Elspeth felt an unexpected pang of empathy with the dead animal. It had only been trying to eat so that it could feed its new litter of pups.

She pressed a hand protectively to her rounded belly. In a few weeks, a month at most, she would be doing the same. Which was why she needed to protect the geese and chickens, she thought, brushing aside her sentimental response. She squatted down, picked the vixen up by its tail and carried it away. She didn’t want the smell to attract bears or wolves.

When she returned, the geese were still honking and flapping angrily about, but there were no bloody wings, no broken feathers that she could see. Andrew’s fence had held. “Quit your flamin’!” she scolded. She wasn’t truly angry with them. Geese were better than dogs when it came to alerting their masters to danger. Her life—and that of her unborn baby—might well depend on them one day.

As it was so close to dawn and she’d be getting up soon anyway, Elspeth decided to start her morning chores. She fed the geese and chickens, gathered the few eggs that had been laid and set off to the cowshed for the morning milking. By the time the animals had been fed and Rona and Rosa, her two mares, had been led out into the paddock, the sun had risen behind a heavy blanket of clouds. She drew water from the well and carried it inside to heat for washing and for her morning porridge. She had just stepped through the door when she saw that the fire had died down to embers and needed wood. But there was no firewood stacked in the corner. And then she remembered. She hadn’t had time to split more wood for the fire yesterday and had been so tired after supper that she had fallen asleep at the table, leaving the chore undone. Her stomach growled.

“Well, Bethie, you cannae be expectin’ the wood to chop itself.” She lifted the heavy water bucket onto the table, took the ax from its resting place beside the fire, went back out into the chilly morning.

The woodpile stood on the west side of the house, and it was dwindling. She hadn’t worked out how she was going to fell trees by herself; that was a problem for another day. She awkwardly lifted a large piece of wood onto an old stump, hoisted the ax and swung. The ax cut halfway through the wood, stuck. She pried it loose, swung again. The wood flew into two pieces.

In the two months since Andrew’s passing, she had gotten better at chopping firewood. She no longer missed the logs and sometimes even managed to split the wood with one blow as Andrew had done. Still, it was an exhausting chore, one she did not enjoy.

How long could she last out here alone? The question leapt, unbidden and unwelcome, into her mind. It was followed by another.

Where else could she go?

She lifted another piece of wood onto the stump, stepped back, swung and soon found herself in a rhythm.

Perhaps after the baby was born she could go to Fort Pitt or one of the other forts and find work there. At least she and the baby would be safe from Indians and wild animals. But would there be other women? Would they be safe from the soldiers?

Perhaps she could journey to Harrisburg or even to Philadelphia. But that meant traveling for weeks alone through wild country, across the mountains, over rivers and through farmsteads. The very idea of swimming across rivers with her baby or sleeping in a bedroll in the open without the protection of four sturdy walls terrified her. One thing was certain: She could not go home. Nor could she stay here forever. She’d managed well enough so far, but what would she do when it came time to plant crops? Could she manage the plow? And what of the harvest? Could she care for her baby, harvest the crops, slaughter the hogs, make cider and salt the meat all at the same time? Her days had been full and long when Andrew had yet lived. How could she manage to do both his chores and hers with a newborn?

And what would she do when her time came? She’d never given birth before, never even seen a baby born. And though she’d helped cows to calve, she knew having babies was different for women. Would she know what to do? Would both she and her baby survive the travail? And then there was the threat of Indians and others who prowled the frontier. Few families had escaped unscathed during this war. Men, women and children had been butchered like cattle—shot or burned alive and scalped by Indians fighting for the French. A family only a few miles to the north had been attacked at midday while working in their fields. The oldest sons had been killed and scalped, the daughters and younger boys kidnapped. The oldest daughter had been found several miles away a few days later. She’d been tied to a tree, her body consumed first by fire, then by wild animals.