Thunder in the Valley Page 10

  “Wrong way, tall man,” she chided. “What be wrong with the two down trees and old deadfall over there a bit?” She pointed a few rods upstream. “I saw them from atop your back soon as you woke me,” she said proudly, eyes sparkling with mischief.

  I clamped my jaw, the best way of dealing with her it seemed, and began making the gather for the meal and the night hours.

  In short order I snapped two armfuls of branches off the deadfall and fetched them inside. Zelda kept watch and stuffed her loose frock with dead leaves picked from the downed oaks. Tinder, I hoped.

  On my third trip she returned the rifle. “Watch for yourself. I’ll start a fire an’ get the pot stewin’. We’ll need two more rounds like that an’ at least two hearth logs,” she commanded and went inside. What she had to start a fire with, I knew not, but I never doubted she would.

  Throughout the cutting of the hearth logs (three for good measure), I kept the long rifle within arm’s reach. Never mind the deepening darkness, I feared the unexpected, which had grown a habit of sneaking up on me the past few days.

  Gray puffs wafted from the smoke hole high in the side of the sycamore as I drug the first of the hearth logs through the entryway. A growing blaze heated Zelda’s pot seated on a triangle of stones while she sliced deer meat from a leg joint. The source of the knife I never determined, she’d probably tossed the blade in her kettle with the Injun camp meat scraps. Later I discovered she always had with her a small flat tin box containing flint, metal wheel, and cord, the secret means of fire starting she shared with no one. Hard to use, those tinder boxes, took real practice and a steady hand; Mother had learned the trick of it.

  The hollow of the tree stretched a dozen feet across and nearly as high. The smoke hole, enlarged by past travelers, was a charred opening near the ceiling opposite the low entryway. Five armloads of branches, the first hearth log, and the cooking fire shrank the room considerably.

  Zelda looked around. “Bring in all the logs, Matthan. We’ll plug the doorway tonight and make it plumb beastly in here. I be cold since I was took, don’t you know.”

  “Must we sleep standing up?” I pointed and circled my hand, indicating how little bare space remained by the fire.

  She smiled, smooth features soft and sweaty beneath the grime. “We can snuggle down together, I won’t mind.”

  “Maybe I would,” I put forth, as always unsure of her intentions. I’d been with women of any kind mighty little. She was funning me for certain.

  “Hell’s bells, tall man,” she said, stirring the pot with her knife, face turned away, “calm thyself. I slept ever’ night for a week rolled in a smelly lump with them red devils, tighter’n packin’ wad, and not a solitary heathen laid hand on me anywheres.”

  “Perhaps they mistook you for a man-child?”

  Her head snapped round. “I’m sure they did. But you know that ain’t the truth of it, don’t you now.” She stared me square in the eye.

  I felt the red spreading out of my coat collar.

  “I’ll just have to trust you, Matthan. ’Sides, you don’t smell half as bad as them Injuns, though an all over wash might taken the gamey edge offen you somewhat.”

  I sputtered a meaningless word or two and went after the other hearth logs, overmatched and outwitted. Her tinkling laughter followed me. If I wasn’t careful, she’d talk me out of my breeches and put me outside to freeze into stone.

  By the time I’d all three logs neatly stacked right inside the entryway, she showed a different demeanor, serious but pleasant. I sat on the logs at her bidding and she reached me a bark slab heaped with venison chunks and steaming bones. I nearly swooned at the hearty smell and ate like a wolf. I licked the slab everywhere when I finished. Zelda chuckled and dipped my iron noggin into the pot. From a leathern pouch she poured a palm full of yellow powder, spilled it into the noggin, and offered the hot vessel to me.

  I sipped and grinned in delight. She’d laced the broth with ground meal. “Where’d you latch on to this?” I asked, swirling the noggin before sipping again.

  “That’s nocake.”

  “Say again,” I said, perplexed.

  “Nocake. My mam taught me how. You parch corn in hot ashes, sift the ashes away, and beaten it till fine. Mixed with a little water Zed and Zeb stay right perky on three spoonsful a day. I’d never be goin’ anywheres without nocake. Don’t you Hannars usen it?”

  “Naw,” I said between sips, not caring if I burned a lip. “We mostly trail with johnnycake.”

  “Too much mixin’ and kneadin’ for maken johnnycake on the trail,” she exclaimed.

  She noticed my suddenly stern countenance. “Nothin’ wrong with johnnycake atall though, if’n you cooks it up ’fore you taken your leave,” she said soothingly. “Your uncle Jeremiah likely was right fond of it.”

  I nodded in agreement and sipped more broth.

  Zelda ate sparingly from the bark slab. “I’d enough for two at the Injun fire an’ you ate for two tonight,” she explained without inquiry from me.

  She wiped her hands on the tail of her buckskin frock, accepted the noggin, and drained the last of the meal-laced broth. “Why you be camped here for so long?”

  Full of belly and caught off guard—again—I stalled, searching for the right answer. She’d opened a powder keg that could explode in my lap with one wrong statement. But she wasn’t inclined to patience.

  “Who you be waitin’ here for, Matthan?” she persisted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hell’s bells, tall man, you been sleepin’ here four—five nights in the middle of Injun territory, you et up your store of vittles, burnt up your wood, an’ the storm’s blown out. Yet you don’t want to watch for Zed and Zeb at the river, nosiree, you fly right away back to this ol’ tree like a lead goose . . . why? To wait for someone, I’m a-bettin’.”

  She dipped a small portion of broth from the kettle.

  I had a sinking feeling I was about to step into the proverbial manure pile. Nothing would wait till morning. I might never sleep.

  “You’re right. I’m here for a rendezvous.”

  “Who with?” She straightened and balanced the noggin in both hands, interest growing by the second.

  My head sank down. No sense believing I could mislead her. No benighted fool sat across the fire. She had a stake in my rendezvous—her life—and she was smart enough to figure as much. Lying wouldn’t help my plight, maybe the truth would only get me stabbed shortly, or later if I ever dozed off. I returned her intent gaze and swallowed hard.

  “Abel Stillwagon,” I said in a firm voice.

  I waited for the usual flare of temper, the swearing and ranting, the unabashed berating I’d started to expect every other time I opened my mouth.

  None of that was forthcoming. She was suddenly serious as a funeral minister and shrank down like a cornered cur dog. “Oh, no, not him, Matthan. Pray tell, he be the devil’s partner. He’ll kill me soon as he lays an eye on me.”

  “And why would he do that?” I demanded angrily, puzzled by her total loss of spirit. Something had gone wrong inside her.

  “Because he’s never out for good, only evil,” Zelda answered, voice faltering. “Zeb called him ‘greasy pants man,’ don’t you know.” Tears welled.

  “Stop that,” I snapped. “What’s this ‘greasy pants man’ nonsense?” My temper began to flare.

  Zelda stifled a sob. “Zeb calls him that ’cause Abel shysters folks smaller and weaker’n himself, an’ Zeb keeps wantin’ to wipe his hands on his breeches, Abel makes him feel so queasy. So Zeb calls him‘greasy pants man.’”

  “Abel’d shoot anyone called him that,” I blurted, instantly regretting the whipped-like hunching of her shoulders.

  She steadied herself and dried her eyes with the back of a hand. “I know, an’ that’s the black-hearted devil you wait to rendezvous with, ain’t it now.” She paused, shot me a fearful glance, then asked, “What for you want to meet up with him, Matthan?”r />
  I put the best face on it I could. “Abel’s my partner. He’ll be sashaying by here with his furs and hides on packhorses, and I’m to join him and help work his cache downriver.”

  “That all there be to it?”

  “What else would there be?”

  She drew a deep breath. “How come everybody downriver went off to chase you down and hang you? Did Abel have anythin’ to do with that?”

  I stared, openmouthed. She had neatly led me into a trap and caught me with both feet. How much did she know?

  “Who told you any such thing about me?”

  “Zeb,” she said. “An’ Zeb don’t lie to his sister. He went off when the cannon boomed then came back for Zed, not wantin’ his brother to miss out on anythin’.” She cleared her throat and continued. “Zeb told how your step-paw an’ Stillwagon took to tradin’ with the Injuns, an’ General Putnam found you all out. He told how Lansford an’ the Ballards killed your step-paw an’ your uncle but let you run free. An’ my paw—”

  I cut in there, having heard enough. “And you’ve known all this from the beginning and still came off from the river with me.”

  “Of course, you be innocent.”

  Dumbfounded by her assertion, I asked what made Zelda believe I was innocent.

  “’Cause my paw told me. After Zed and Zeb went a-barrelin’ for the fort ’thout askin’ him, Paw said ’fore he followed them Jeremiah Hannar wouldn’t abide Abel Stillwagon maken a fugitive outta his favorite nephew. An’ my paw don’t never lie to me neither.”

  I leaned back, eased my legs, and studied the top of her yellow-brown head. If she believed me innocent of any wrongdoing, did she harbor any expectation I would forego rendezvousing with Abel and fetch her home instead?

  Zelda’s patience lagged behind her jawbone. “Don’t dare tote me back to Paw, does you, Matthan?”

  I shook my head. “They’d never listen to my side of things; Lansford has riled them to a fever pitch and Jeremiah’s wounding of the colonel sets all hell to pay in the valley of the Muskingum for Hannars—or should I say for me—the last of the Hannars.”

  Zelda stared into the flames. “Matthan, I trusts you. You won’t abuse me. An’ killin’ that knife-stabbin’ red heathen was a fine piece of work for any borderer. But Abel be as big as two—three men. Can you keep him offen me?”

  I took my time answering. She needed some reassurance if we were to sleep atall that night. “Yes, I believe so. Abel must change his plans, he has no choice. He can’t make a downriver run with his fur cache any more than I can risk fetching you home. He needs help cross-country with them packhorses.”

  Zelda nodded, lifted her pot from the stones, and built up the blaze with new branches. She forced a smile. “Maybe Zed and Zeb will catch up tomorrow and taken me right offen your hands, don’t you know.”

  I looked away and rose, clutching the long rifle. “I’ll check our back trail and the woods round about. You make ready to sleep. I’ll be gone awhile.” Without waiting for any acknowledgment, I stepped outside.

  The chance any two-legged enemy lurked about was slim to zero. But the anguish in Zelda’s eyes was simply unbearable. She truly feared Stillwagon, and while she trusted my sincerity and earnestness, Zelda doubted one man could handle the giant Stillwagon. I understood that. I wasn’t sure any one man could either. In desperation she fell back on the expectation, no matter how weak, that those who’d always before protected her—Zed and Zeb—were alive, searching for their captive sister, and would yet, somehow, arrive to save her. I faded into the night rather than shatter her last prayer for survival with an inadvertent, albeit truthful, slip of the tongue. She’d been through enough for one day. One more soul-wracking revelation and she might turn into a blubbering half-wit, as had many a woman during the Injun troubles.

  The clear night was sharply cold, but the air was slightly warmer tonight. Once January freezes bottomed out, days and nights grew warmer a few degrees each turn of the clock till a full thaw melted snow and ice and unlocked the land. Sloughs of mud then formed wherever the sun touched the trail, slowing the travel of men and horses.

  By my count the ten days I’d had to reach the rendezvous tree ran dry tomorrow, the eighteenth of January 17 and 92. Allowing as how Abel and his cohor—Hasper something or other—had lost a few days riding out the norther under cover with their animals, Abel would be five or six days late. But Abel had a habit of performing feats other men only dreamed of. Depending on his trail savvy and how bad the storm had blown over beyond the western horizon, he might be only two or three days off.

  A speedy arrival of the red-nosed giant boded ill for Zelda, but a prolonged delay before Abel showed, learned his scheme had gone awry, and discovered his tired packhorses must tramp back across the territory to where passage on the Ohio could be secured, boded ill for him and his new and unknown partner, Matthan Hannar. Mud, moccasins, and horse hoofs made for a sour marriage.

  I walked far down the ice of Johnathan Creek and dallied till I was pretty certain whatever call of nature womanfolk endured in the night hours had been tended by Zelda, answered my own call, then returned.

  A great horned owl hooted. Due east wolves howled, first occasion since the norther. A thaw was just around the corner, sure as midnight.

  Zelda had indeed made ready for sleeping. A hearth log jutted into the fire, the branch wood had been rearranged. She lay on the far side of the steady blaze wrapped in the buffalo hide with her head pillowed on one arm. She snored merrily, thank the Lord.

  A space on the near side of the fire had been cleared to provide a second bedding site and the hearth log had been cleverly angled toward the open space so it could be slid into the flames piecemeal and sustain the heat overnight. Slid by me, naturally.

  The remaining hearth logs, when stacked atop each other, walled off most of the entryway. I removed my greatcoat, spread it for a ground blanket, and laid down with the lock of the long rifle clasped between my thighs.

  Zelda smacked her lips, rolled on her side, and the snoring ceased. Her smooth bronze features were startlingly pretty in the firelight. I stared a long while. I’d never known anyone or anything like her. I’d seen a number of women—handsome, fat, ugly, plain, pretty—at Fort Frye, the Point in Marietta, Fort Pitt, and on the Ohio. None had shown any inkling of the spirit and spunk possessed by this slip of a girl—woman. Not a one could’ve escaped from under Knife-bearer and dodged his attacks long enough to be rescued.

  I couldn’t help wondering how it might be snuggled down with her as she’d suggested earlier, a notion that shamed me. Enough advantage had already been taken of Zelda to last her a lifetime.

  I fell asleep feeling noble as a wharf rat.

  Chapter 13

  January 18

  It was anybody’s guess which Zelda Shaw awaited when awakening in her company. At the snapping of a twig she could be a calm pleasant woman, a giddy slip of a girl, or a tart-mouthed defiant female. You opened your eyes, grabbed the halter strap with both hands, and hung on for a ride who knows where. She dared the day to be dull every morning.

  Like a good lamb I tended the hearth log all night then went hard asleep in the hour before false dawn. A strong hand shook my leg and a high excited voice jolted me awake. “Roust your bones, vittles be ’bout ready.” That familiar mischievous giggle erupted.

  I positioned myself against the spare hearth logs and faced the fire, surprised at the bright haze of morning light shining through the entryway behind me.

  “You overslept,” Zelda scolded. “So I fetched the gettin’ up eatin’ by my lonesome.”

  My alerted nose scented meat cooking.

  “Rabbit stew with a sprinkle of nocake smells right tasty, don’t it now,” she declared with another giggle.

  “Rabbit stew?”

  “Yessiree, tall man. Whilst you snored on forever, I scouted a snow run and snared a lean pair before first light. They be skinny, but they’ll chew all right.” She proudly point
ed to the furry pelts stretched across the branch pile on her side of the snapping blaze.

  Her kettle bubbled. She served me on the bark slab and watched me eat. When I returned the empty slab, licked clean, she handed me a steaming noggin.

  I sniffed cautiously.

  “Black bark tea,” she explained. “Mite bitter, but stouter’n melted snow.” She was right as usual.

  She fed herself, downing a goodly portion, put the slab aside and repeatedly dipped a twig in the kettle and sucked it dry, preferring meat broth to woods tea.

  “Matthan,” she started, “you said yesterday we’d talk about tomorrow. Well, tomorrow be here, so let us chew the fat awhile.”

  Zelda’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. She seemed downright anxious and I became wary. Something besides a hearty breakfast worked on her. Her voice indicated she had fixed her mind on something and was about to spring it on me, like it or not.

  “What kind of fat?” I asked lightheartedly.

  Her patience was short-fused as ever. “I got me a whale of a plan. Your man Stillwagon had to sit out the norther same as us’ens, ’specially with them packhorses he’ll be leadin! Likely, he won’t show for three—four more days.” Words came faster as she talked. “Lookee here, my brothers should be no more than a day behind us at most. If’n we was to make a quick hike back over to the river, we’d likely bump into ’em huntin’ for their dear sister ’fore nightfall. Thataway, they’d take me offen your hands and leave you a heap of time to sashay back here to your tree and wait for your partner. An’ don’t you worry none, I’ll raise such a ruckus ’bout them gettin’ me straight home to Paw, Zed and Zeb won’t be followin’ you nowheres, that I promise,” Zelda finished breathlessly.

  I pondered on a reply, sipping tea, while she wound her hands in the front of her frock. Zelda had planned her proposal with great care and placed her eggs in a single basket: a quick return to her brothers and a fast sweep downriver away from the clutches of the devil’s own scoundrel, Abel Stillwagon.

  “Well, Matthan, damn it, what you say?”