The Frontiersman’s Daughter (15 page)
Susanna reached across and clasped her hand. “But you’ve come back! There’s still time! Once he knows you’re here—”
“Nay!” Lael exclaimed. “He mustn’t know.”
Susanna looked incredulous. “But he must! Why would he dally with the likes of Piper Cane these past five years? She’s badgered him into marrying her, is all. He was heartbroke when you left. All he ever wanted was you, ever since you forted up with us when you were just a young ’un.”
Lael shook her head. “There’s much that you don’t know, Susanna. The past is the past. Let’s leave it be.”
“Tell me you don’t love him, and then I’ll leave it be. Tell me that.”
This time Lael looked away. “I loved a boy once. I hardly know the man.”
Simon Hayes is all show and no stay.
“Simon’s the same as he ever was, only handsomer,” Susanna said softly.
Lael’s heart twisted painfully. She longed to ask,
How handsome? How tall? How deep is his voice? Does he ever speak of me?
Susanna continued in a rush, “You should see his homeplace! He got an extra thousand acres from the land commission, and he’s put in the first crop of tobacco in this country. Everything he touches turns to gold, and I ain’t just sayin’ so ’cause he’s my brother.” Her mouth turned grim. “But he’s makin’ a mistake come Sunday. You remember how Piper Cane had no kin after that Shawnee raid so Ma took her in. Ma always was one for strays and orphans and the like. I never wanted it to happen, but Piper Cane, with her bewitchin’ ways, stayed on long after, and I saw her work quite a spell on Simon.”
Lael shut her mind against the thought of Simon and Piper living and loving beneath the same roof. “He’s made his choice,” she said flatly, beginning to let go of the dream she had carried in her heart for so long.
Abruptly she got up and opened a shutter and leaned out onto the sill, letting the night breeze brush her face and wanting to clear her head of all she’d just heard. Behind her, Susanna came and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I always wanted you for a sister, Lael, and it ain’t too late.”
For a long time Lael stood alone by the window until her legs grew numb beneath her, the still night like a balm to her unsettled spirits. She was glad she’d come, but all the joy had gone out of the visit. She retired to the corner bed Will and Susanna had graciously given over to her. The corn shucks rustled beneath her weight and felt strangely comfortable. But sleep did not come.
In the morning, after some half-hearted bites of cornmeal mush laced with sorghum and cream, she prepared to leave, smiling wryly as Susanna supplied her with a generous supply of meal and other necessities. She hadn’t had to say a thing about her need, but somehow Susanna knew. Around her the children ate cheerfully, anxious to meet the day. She teased and talked with them and envied them their innocence.
Her last words to Susanna were soft but stern: “Not a word to anyone, you hear?”
Susanna shook her head in consternation, but there were tears in her eyes. “You’re a hard one, Lael Click. Suppose somebody sees you?”
Lael turned the mare toward home. “Nobody will.”
In the days to come Lael was careful to keep to the cabin. No longer did she make a fire in the hearth lest someone see the smoke from the chimney. Blessedly, the days were warm. She took her meals cold but hardly ate at all. Susanna had given her an ample supply of bear bacon, hominy, salt, a pouch of dried apples, and a sack of dried beans to tide her over till she could go to the fort.
She avoided the river, though once, under the cover of twilight, she walked down the long, sloping bank to bathe. With great effort, she shunned all thoughts of Simon. But like the memory of Pa he was everywhere, enduringly linked to the river and the woods and hills around her.
Perhaps I was wrong to come back.
But in her heart she knew it was the only place to be. Here it was a wonder to shake off time and be free of its pressures and restraints. She recalled the silver pocket watch given to her by Miss Mayella when she’d finished her first year. It was perfectly round with a dainty chain and a filigree of leaves on its face, but she’d been unable to truly appreciate its beauty. She’d sold it before leaving Virginia, and the extra funds had helped her come home.
And so she spent her first days rediscovering her homeplace. She trimmed back the rose canes, newly leafed and already heavy with tiny buds, inspected the harnesses and bridles hanging in the barn, sorted through Pa’s tools, sharpened the ax head, and added to her list of needed supplies.
On a whim one day she climbed to the loft and there, beneath a pile of straw, long buried, lay her rifle and the Indian blanket with the blue stripe, one corner still fire-blackened. She took up the gun but let the blanket lay for now, awash with memories. What had become of Captain Jack? The haze of years had come between them, severing her infatuation with him, if not her lingering fascination. She was slowly letting go of Simon. Time to do the same with the Shawnee.
For two days she labored at replacing the chinking that had crumbled all over the plank floor. She trod a worn path to and from the river, gathering mud to press between the logs. Her shoulders and arms ached from heaving the buckets, but her reward was a deep, dreamless sleep each night.
She plotted out a corn patch small enough for a woman alone to turn her hand to yet ample enough to see her through the winter. Looking out over the vast meadow that had once been a sea of corn, she felt a tiny prick of alarm. How would she, a girl gone soft, ever turn over the sod? The field was overgrown with rye grass and clover and blackberry vines thick as rope. It had once taken all Pa’s strength, and her ma with him, to wrestle the land into submission.
Still mulling the corn, she repaired the paling fence that once framed the garden spot to the left of the cabin, then began to turn over the soil with a shovel for a vegetable patch. In her hands the dirt was black and loamy and smelled richly of spring, promising potatoes and beans, squash and turnips. Susanna had said that watermelons were now being grown at the fort!
As the day approached when Simon would wed, Lael’s spirits began to sag, though it signaled an end to her self-imposed exile, and once again she could ride into the settlement, head held high and free, an independent woman.
The wedding day dawned bright and glorious. The sun’s first rays crept onto the cabin porch and peered at her through the shuttered windows. She rolled over on her makeshift bed and thought wistfully,
This is the day I might have wed Simon Hayes.
By noon she’d climbed to the knob. Up high, she felt stronger and more settled. She watched the sweeping arm of the sun change the valleys below from green to gold and noted that the swallows flew low to the ground, a sure sign of rain.
That evening it did rain, falling hard and clean on the cabin roof. ’Twas a fine night for wedded bliss, she mused. As a girl, she’d often dreamed of being a bride, but maybe it was time to put that wish away. She’d been unlucky in love even at Briar Hill. No man had ever turned her head, trapped as she was in the past. Those fine city dandies hadn’t the appeal of the stalwart woodsmen and Indians she’d been raised with.
Maybe I’m meant to be alone like this. No husband, no babies in a cradle, no rocking chair in which to nurse them and kiss them and croon to them. Just me, and only me. For always.
Chilled, she finally lit a fire and looked back just once, recollecting how she and Simon had rowed the river in a boat with bittersweet at its bow and he’d begged her to run away with him.
The Sabbath passed quietly, but on Monday she steeled herself for the coming confrontation. Lael chose a plain indigo dress and put her hair up with a multitude of pins, topping it off with the straw hat she favored. For once she regretted she had no bonnet to hide behind.
She could have found her way blindfolded to Fort Click. She crested Hackberry Ridge with a queer feeling in her whole being. The sun was in her eyes, but the settlement was plain before her. She felt like a girl again, come to fort up in times of trouble or simply fetch supplies with Pa. For a fleeting moment she drew the mare to a halt, unable to go on.
The fort had two new blockhouses and its gates were open wide, a sign of peaceful times. The outlying cornfields looked newly turned, pale green stalks thrusting through the rich soil. The new church stood apart, its logs green and shiny. And then there was the river with paths worn to and fro, and the twin springs shaded by the age-old tree Ma called the divine elm.
Recognized or not, she knew she would create a stir simply because she was a woman and she rode alone. At the gate a group of men looked up as she passed. She lowered her head and eyed the row of cabins. Susanna hadn’t told her which was Ma Horn’s. She looked about in bewilderment, passing children and dogs at play on the common, her ears assaulted by the high-pitched ring of the blacksmith’s anvil. But it was not Simon’s father who hammered hard at the smithy, for the Hayes clan had moved farther west.
She tethered her horse to a nearby post and knocked on the cabin door she remembered. Her spirits fell when there was no response. She knocked again, so loudly this time she felt she was calling all the fort’s inhabitants out of their cabins and announcing her presence. And then she remembered: Ma Horn was half blind and a bit deaf, Susanna said. With a push at the door, she entered, standing on the sill long enough for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
From the shadows came a beloved, quivery voice. “I’ve been prayin’ for your return, child. Five long years. And now the good Lord has seen fit to answer my prayers.”
Ma Horn was much changed. Lael knelt by the old woman’s rocker and laid her head in the apron-covered lap and cried, tears of gladness and of mourning. Ma Horn’s arthritic fingers stroked her bent head and the years fell away and she was a child again, loved and understood and at rest.
“Did they try to take all the wilderness out of you at that fancy school?”
Lael assured her they had not, pointing to her bare feet as proof.
“Law, but you’re a sight for sore eyes. You look the same, only you’ve growed taller. You always did have the prettiest head of hair in the country.”
They drank steaming cups of sassafras tea, and Lael felt a bittersweet sadness. Everything felt strange, a bit rusty, as if she herself had changed so much she couldn’t quite get comfortable again. Several times the old woman reached out to pat Lael’s hand or head as if to convince herself she’d truly come home.
“So your ma’s took another husband. It’s to be expected, her being a woman who can’t do without a man and pinin’ for your pa.”
“Mr. Ashcroft is a barrister,” Lael told her. “They met when he settled Pa’s estate. It was through him that Pa deeded me the land.”
“Your pa did right to leave you the land. I reckon you’ll be stayin’ on then.”
“Aye, it’s my home. I never should have left it.”
But Ma Horn shook her head. “It ain’t fittin’ for you to be livin’ alone, child.”
Lael squeezed her bony, work-hardened hand. “Come home with me. Let me take you out of this place. Let me be your eyes and ears from here on.”
But Ma Horn only smiled. “This here’s my home now and I don’t often pass a lonely day. Folks come as far as Castle Rock to get my remedies and to sit a spell.”
Lael looked up, wondering how she possibly went herbing. Overhead were the same baskets she helped fill when they went a-gathering in the old days. The pungent scent of herbs—a touch medicinal and somewhat spicy—pervaded the gloom. Just this morning Lael had come across a patch of ginseng along the creek bottom and the sight nearly unseated her from her horse.
“I aim to dig some ginseng for profit. I’ll bring you some if you need it,” she promised.
“Bring some coltsfoot and a peck of salat too. There ain’t nothin’ like salat to strengthen the blood come spring.”
Before Lael finished her tea, Ma Horn was dozing in her chair. She was loath to leave, yet she had other business to attend to. The long list in her pocket would take time to settle. She moved to the door noiselessly, but before she could open it Ma Horn came awake.
“Are you pinin’ for Simon, child?”
Lael tied the ribbons of her straw hat under her chin with deft fingers and forced steadiness into her voice. “Some. But I don’t aim to pine long for a married man.”
The sutler said there was no wagon to be had, just a two-wheeled cart. Lael decided it would suit her, perusing the store’s dimly lit interior and peeking into kegs and barrels as she went. The walls were thick with merchandise, from hand tools to sundry spices. She marveled at the improved selection and wondered where the old storekeeper had gone. What Ma would have given for some nutmeg! A wood-and-tin nutmeg grater proved irresistible, and a small collection of bottled mustards and vinegars was purchased as much for sentiment as practicality. Pa had always been fond of such. She had trouble keeping to her list the longer she tarried.
As the storekeeper weighed salt and cut deer hide for moccasins, she felt him cast sly glances toward her, her pale profile half hidden beneath the straw hat. She finished counting out her money while he gathered up the heaviest goods and followed her into the blinding sunlight.
