The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (56 page)

Carter cleared his throat.
 
"Really, sir, perhaps we'd best leave
you there until you calm down and we can make a thorough search of the area for
the men who wounded you."

"Look no further.
 
She
shot me out on the
battlefield!"

"Indeed, blood
loss."
 
Carter shook his head and
walked to Betsy, motioning Tom to join him.
 
Stroking the packhorse's neck, he said, low, "We can detain him an
hour at most."

"Thank you," Tom
whispered.
 
"Do yourself a favor
and kill him."

"You're as bad as he is, and
no, I don't want to hear your grievances.
 
I'm tired of fighting and killing.
 
Madam."
 
He looked at
Betsy.
 
"I'm grateful to you for
exposing injustice that I myself was forbidden to bring to light.
 
Seven of us will testify of the Branwells'
criminal operations.
 
I will be relieved
if you left Camden this hour and reached the sanctuary you spoke of.
 
And as you go, know that I shall hold your
property for you until such day as you return for it."

She drew a ragged breath.
 
"Thank you, Mr. Carter.
 
Please don't let him see which way we
go."

"Absolutely not.
 
Now leave here at once."

Chapter Forty-Five

BETSY AWAKENED BETWEEN a snoring
Tom and cast iron pots, her face pressed to a blanket that had seen cleaner
days, a wagon swaying beneath her.
 
Her
mouth tasted like a decomposed varmint, and her head ached as if it had been
whacked against a tree.
 
But the ominous
cramping in her womb had stopped.
 
When
she stroked her belly, the baby shifted about, happy to not be in flight down
the Waxhaws Road or stupid with fatigue.

War might have ripped South
Carolina apart, but people could still trust in the innate goodness of strangers,
as demonstrated by the Dean family, who had let them climb aboard their wagon
at noon and ride west with them.
 
The
family had even offered to feed them supper and put them up for the night.

Her stomach growled.
 
She couldn't remember her last meal.
 
She had a vague recollection of bandaging
Tom's head after they'd been ferried across the Wateree by jubilant
Loyalists.
 
Yawning, she looked at Tom's
bandage.
 
Hair might cover the patch
where the ball had scalped, but he'd bear the scar the rest of his days.
 
Her eyelids drooped.
 
Sleep again found her.

The Deans awakened them around
six-thirty in the evening on the east bank of the Congaree River.
 
After Betsy and Tom paid their own fare and
contributed to that of the others, the entire party was ferried across.
 
The family encouraged them to stay for
supper at the home of a friend a quarter hour away and to also accept their
hospitality for the night.

So after pork stew, cobbler, and
coffee, Betsy, Tom, the Deans, and their friends watched moths flirt with the
backyard bonfire, and Tom spun his tale: of traveling from Charlotte Town
Tuesday afternoon, getting caught in a skirmish, being held prisoner all night,
and escaping the battle.
 
Children
ensconced in mothers' laps listened with rapt eyes.

Much later, Betsy blew out a
lantern and relaxed on her blanket in the barn.
 
When she regained sleep, dreams caught up with her at last.
 
Around three in the morning, on the threshold
between dreaming and waking, she gazed into the night to behold the specter of
Clark turning his back on her and walking away a final time.
 
Then she rolled on her side away from Tom
and let the trickle of tears begin, let it gather momentum into the storm of
reckoning she'd weather for a long while, jamming her teeth together to silence
her sobs.

She and Clark had never said
goodbye.
 
Not in Augusta, nor in Log
Town, nor on the battlefield.
 
But every
one of those moments had been a goodbye.
 
The whole marriage had been a goodbye.
 
Always he slipped away from her like mist clutched between fingers.
 
When she searched her memories for laughter
they'd shared in Augusta, it all receded before her, ungraspable.

Were it not for the child she
carried, she'd have questioned whether Clark ever walked the earth, for he
seemed imaginary.
 
With a jolt, she
realized that the man she'd married, the fellow of sensible politics who
provided for her and lived a quiet shoemaker's life, wasn't Clark.
 
The Clark she'd fallen in love with had
never existed.

Even more astonishing was her
insight that goodwife Betsy Sheridan who kept a tidy house and the books for
her husband's business, the woman who'd settled down — she was imaginary,
too.
 
If the Augusta ladies knew she'd
escaped a mass grave, emptied chamberpots in a whorehouse, exposed a blackmail
scam, pulled a printing press, shot two men, and wounded a Horseman from the
Apocalypse, they'd faint.

The straw beneath their blankets
rustled.
 
Tom curled up to her backside
and wrapped an arm around her.
 
It was
the same position they'd awakened in one morning at the Leaping Stag, except
there was nothing sexual about it this time, and there was everything solid
about it.
 
For a month he'd been there,
always a friend, always a partner the way Clark had never been.
 
Not for a long while had Tom been the blushing,
gangly apprentice from Augusta.
 
Even
that memory receded when she reached for it.

The Fates had granted her a brief
reprieve.
 
She lay safe on a blanket in
a barn west of the Congaree with leisure at last to grieve.
 
Miles northwest, refuge awaited her among
people whose ways so differed from hers that a month earlier, she couldn't have
envisioned herself living among them.
 
During that month, however, her values and priorities had been stood
upside down.
 
That morning, Thursday,
August seventeenth, her affirmation of her earlier decision to venture to
Mulberry Creek and claim what was hers no longer seemed desperate and crazy,
but just and wise.

***

Ninety Six was a piddle of
artisans' shops, a courthouse, and a jail numbering perhaps a dozen buildings
along the road.
 
Even counting the
surrounding flourmills and farmsteads, the village didn't seem worthy of the
palisade around it, especially since the Cherokee hadn't been aggressive in
years.
 
She and Tom rode on through,
minimal interaction with the inhabitants, just a couple of travelers headed
somewhere, anywhere.

The way veered west, away from the
sunlit sparkle of the Saluda River.
 
They camped Saturday night among hills and hardwoods, and Betsy counted
stars through verdant foliage.
 
On the
morrow, they'd cross Mulberry Creek.

How would her mother know she was
there?
 
How long would she and Tom have
to wait?
 
They had about ten days'
rations and would need to move on by the twenty-fifth if Sophie didn't
show.
 
The problem was that Betsy didn't
know where else to go.
 
It was too late
to mull over options.

A clever secondary plan hadn't come
to her by the time they set off Sunday.
 
The terrain grew more mountainous.
 
They didn't reach the creek until the evening.
 
No human had set foot on the ledges providing a view of the road
in quite awhile, and it had been at least a week since another horse had
traveled the road.
 
Still, they couldn't
be too careful, so after they picketed their horses above rhododendron and
rocks, Tom sneaked an eighth of a mile back down the road and obscured their
passage.

Monday and Tuesday they
waited.
 
Wednesday afternoon the
twenty-third, a week after the battle of Camden, while Betsy sat beside
Mulberry Creek and contemplated the water, she heard soft movement behind her
and sprang up.
 
Her alarm transcended
into relief and joy.
 
On the bank stood
Standing Wolf.

With a grin, he helped her up the
bank.
 
She hugged him despite the stinky
bear grease.
 
"How did you find
us?"

"Noisy.
 
Birds for miles around chatter your location."

"Pshaw."
 
She laughed, the first time she'd done so in
too long.
 
"It's so good to see
you.
 
Who else is here?"
 
His smile grew mystical.
 
"My mother?
 
Oh, let's not tarry another moment!"

She earned kicks of annoyance from
the baby for scrambling back up the hill.
 
Joshua Hale spotted her next and pointed out a slender, dark-haired man
approaching from the left, but she whirled Joshua about in a hug first.

The "man" turned out to
be Sophie in a hunting shirt and trousers.
 
"Mother, oh, Mother!"
 
And because she couldn't help herself, because she'd doubted she'd see
her mother again, Betsy began bawling as soon as she and Sophie embraced.

When she regained composure, she
smiled through tears and fumbled a handkerchief to her face while her mother
smiled through her own tears.
 
It was
indeed her mother holding her hands and stroking her face, though not Nagchoguh
Hogdee, Paper Woman, so much as Mountain Woman, her face lightly tanned, her
body toned and agile from riding a horse and sleeping beneath stars.
 
But more than just color and activity
contributed to her vitality.
 
Sophie
Barton looked content for the first time ever.

A wiry Indian approached them.
 
Unlike Standing Wolf, he wore a hunting
shirt and trousers, and his black hair, full and long, was plaited.
 
Red man?
 
White man?

Walk in Two Worlds: Ayukapeta
Hokolen Econa.
 
Memories stirred,
placing his face among those she remembered from childhood in Alton, the
incident a joke she'd overheard him share with Will and David.
 
Wonder filled her voice.
 
"Mathias Hale — why, I do know
you!"

The obsidian of his eyes
softened.
 
He touched her cheek with the
back of his fingers, as if he couldn't believe she was real.
 
"You I haven't seen in eight
years."

"She looks just like Mama,
doesn't she?" murmured Joshua.

"Incredible."

"And look, here's one who
escaped."
 
Joshua pulled Tom over.

Tom made a stiff bow.
 
"Pleased to meet you again, Mrs.
Barton."
 
He shook Mathias's
hand.
 
"Thomas Alexander,
sir."

"Mathias Hale.
 
Thank you for seeing our daughter to
us."

Sophie glanced around.
 
"Where's Clark?"
 
Betsy lowered her gaze and cleared her
throat, but Sophie spared her fumbling for words.
 
"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry."
 
Her mother embraced her again, and her voice emerged quiet,
weary.
 
"In that case, Mr.
Alexander, we're very much in your debt for bringing Betsy safely to
us."
 
Sophie's gaze traveled to
Tom's head wound.
 
"I presume you
put your own life in danger to do so."

Joshua clapped a hand on Tom's
shoulder.
 
"I told Betsy he'd be a
good friend."

Mathias said to Tom, "Come
back with us into the mountains.
 
Wait
for all this to blow over.
 
The way
isn't safe yet for you to return to Georgia."

Tom bowed his head.
 
"Thank you, sir, madam."
 
He turned a smile to Betsy.
 
"I'd like that very much."

A crow cawed.
 
No ordinary crow, Betsy knew, when her kin
stiffened to listen.
 
"What
now?"
 
Mathias trotted for the
ledge to get a view of the road.
 
Standing Wolf accompanied him.

Mathias responded to more crow
caws.
 
Betsy and the others headed for
the overlook.
 
A Cherokee warrior
sprinted from the brush, his hair, tattoos, and clothing similar to that of the
Creek, but a more olive hue to his skin.
 
He conversed with Mathias, gesturing south.
 
Mathias nodded and turned to all of them.
 
"Panther Leaping spotted a party of two
dozen militiamen and several redcoats headed north on horseback.
 
They'll pass beneath us within a
minute.
 
Mr. Alexander, are your horses
secure behind those rocks?"