Thunder in the Valley Read online

  She’d dropped the fat in the fire. Unless I steered the conversation just so, Zelda would soon learn the true fate of her brothers and I wasn’t sure she could face that.

  “Too dangerous over on the river. We can’t be sure all the Injuns are dead. Best we stay right here and let Zed and Zeb find us.” I crossed fingers on both hands.

  “But there be only five redskins and we saw all but one dead or badly wounded. How dangerous can one stinkin’ heathen be for a man like yourself? Any ways, Zed and Zeb won’t have no problem overcomin’ that solitary Injun and they’ll be near the river somewhere, we just have to help ’em locate me.”

  I sensed the shape of her thinking. If all attempts to persuade me to spirit her away from the Stillwagon rendezvous failed, she’d head downcreek alone. She’d concocted a rescue scheme suiting her needs, and such was her fear of Abel, she’d sneak off first chance, betting I’d follow and not abandon her to an unknown fate. She didn’t believe me capable of the last. Neither did I.

  “Girl, what makes you so all-fired cocksure of these brothers of yours? Suppose they’ve no notion where you are after that storm snowed over all the tracks and closed the river. They might be far behind searching for some clue you’re still alive and be days catching up with us. For all they know, the Injuns killed you and the snow has buried you till spring. Maybe they’ve already closed the book on you and gone home to your paw,” I insisted.

  “What do you mean, gone home to my paw? Paw’d kill those boys with his bare hands lessen they come home with me kickin’ or my dead body. That’s the way it be in my family.”

  My questioning of her brothers’ devotion had her blazing hotter than the hinges of hades. Two things were in the fire now: the fat and me. Zelda was a leg up every turn of the wheel. Regardless of how much I desired to spare her the painful truth about Zed and Zeb, lest I wanted to play watchdog every minute of every day and night, she would have to be told her lifelong protectors were no more. Until she accepted me as her only hope, no matter how loath some that was shortly to be to her, Zelda might steal my coat and rifle in the middle of the night and leave me high and dry. And if I let her traipse off down creek alone this far from home without a gun, heavy coat, and trail larder, I might as soon shoot her myself.

  “Damn it, Matthan, will you taken me to find my brothers or must a girl do it herself?” Zelda dipped her twig in the kettle and sucked loudly. “If I be goin’, a late start won’t help much, will it now?”

  Wondering why the fickle winds of fate found me in such a predicament, I gritted my teeth and told her, “No need for you to be so testy. Your brothers can’t help you.”

  “And why not?” she challenged, voice taut and shrill.

  I laid the truth out. “Zed and Zeb are dead. Slain and scalped by those same Injuns took you off.”

  Her head shook back and forth. “Oh, no—”

  “Listen to me, Zelda. Who do you suppose those redskins were battling while Knife-bearer tried his best to gut you?”

  She gave not an inch. “I don’t believe you. Even if it was my brothers, how can you be certain they’re dead?”

  “Remember that scalp ‘halloo’ we heard? Redskins make that call when they’ve finished their killing. That big Ottawa was telling Knife-bearer, who was already dead, he’d lifted the hair of white men,” I said, hating each and every word.

  Tears of dismay and frustration dampened Zelda’s face. But I’d spoken the truth and she couldn’t deny it. She knew I wasn’t capable of mean and deliberate cruelty toward her. Her features saddened and her heart broke before my very eyes, a sight that haunted me for years.

  Zelda fell backwards. Before I could move she rolled into a ball, knees drawn tight to breast, and cried in long wailing howls of anguish and grief.

  I fled. Nothing in my short life had prepared me for helping others ease the soul-shattering pain of losing those most near and dear. When the heart is ripped from its moorings, first the grief must be cried out. I’d experienced that much firsthand.

  I couldn’t leave and I couldn’t help her at the moment. To keep from some stupid gesture that might only worsen the situation, I gathered wood and suffered with her. The mournful sounds of her grieving trailed after me. I sank lower than a dog’s belly that forenoon.

  My pile of branches reached shoulder height by the time all noise ceased in the hollow tree. I continued the gather, unsure when Zelda could be approached without inflicting more pain on her.

  The first call was almost too faint to hear. The second was much louder. “Matthan, I’ve need of you.”

  I eased through the entryway, leaned the long rifle by the opening, and took a seat on the hearth logs, all the while studying her. She had dried and cleaned most of the grime from her face and pounded the dust and wood rot from her buckskins. Her green eyes were clear and very intense.

  “Matthan, please listen an’ hear me out ’fore I bawl again.” Her somber politeness, so out of character, commanded my complete attention and silence.

  “I want you to see to my brothers. I won’t have them lying dead where wild varmints can worry on them. You be a smart one, you’ll find some way to bury them.”

  I nodded my head, mouth too dry to speak.

  “I promise I’ll wait here for you. Your man Stillwagon won’t be here for a day or two, so I’ll be safe enough if’n you hurry back. I’ll have the meal ready and waitin’.”

  Her promise I accepted without reservation. She wanted the remains of her brothers cared for and would behave accordingly. I felt compelled to honor her request as partial amends for foisting a truth on her better left untold. The telling of it had been for my benefit, not hers.

  Reaching for the noggin I’d hastily abandoned, I gulped cold bark tea. “All right, I’ll be off straight-away. Keep a sharp lookout. If you see or hear anyone, use the buffalo robe for a coat and scoot down the creek until you catch up or meet me coming back.” I stood. “An’ don’t slow yourself down bringing that fool pot with you.”

  I glimpsed a bleak smile before she nodded agreement, pulled the buffalo robe around shoulders suddenly shaking, and shooed me out the door hole.

  A bright sun shone on a warming winter morning. The raw abiding cold of the past week had lessened. Thaws developed slowly but steadily during January in the Ohio country. Creek ice would turn slippery by midday, then freeze solid again at dark.

  I set a fast pace and made the Muskingum before noon. From the knoll where we watched the Ottawa and his fellow warrior sink under the ice, I glassed the Injun camp on the far bank. Nothing remained but cold gray ashes around a blackened log. Gone were Knife-bearer’s body and the wounded warrior the Ottawa’s death companion had assisted back to the fire after the Shaw skirmish.

  What happened over there after our departure? Four Injuns I could account for. The Ottawa and two others had ambushed the Shaws, leaving Knife-bearer to guard Zelda. But there had been five warriors in the dugout canoe back downstream days ago. Had the fifth warrior helped with the ambush? If he had, and survived the Shaws’ bullets, perhaps he’d returned to the fire, disposed of Knife-bearer, and aided the wounded Injun. Or had another Injun war party made an appearance? I had to learn if new enemies were in the vicinity.

  After checking the long rifle, I slid down the snow-drifted bank onto the frozen river and swung wide of the smooth ice, skirting the yawning hole in which old enemies had perished. No movement in the woods behind the Injun camp. I circled the blackened log centering the ashes, one eye always on the trees.

  The tracks told all. The missing warrior had returned. A third pair of footprints extended from the camp, over to the ice hole and back, one set deeper than thother, indicating some burden had been given a one-way tote by the final surviving member of the war party. At least three Injuns rested on the river bottom.

  I quartered the snow fronting the woods and found the departing trail of the fifth warrior and that of a staggering, half-carried companion. I followed since their footprint
s led in the direction where the Injuns waylaid Zelda’s brothers, my sole reason for being here atall.

  A mile or so upstream slabs of rock walled off the pathway. At the base of the wall the Shaw brothers sprawled weaponless, backsides touching. Blood splattered the snow in a wide half circle. Both heads had been scalped. As with everything else in their lives, they’d fought to the last breath and died together. I dragged their stiffened remains hard against the slab wall and covered them with loose stone as best I could. I said a prayer over them, saddened Zed and Zeb had passed on unawares they’d saved their sister with the ultimate sacrifice men made for each other.

  When I hefted the long rifle and turned away, my foot struck something hard under the snow packed down by body weight. I knelt, dug under the red tainted crust, and freed a pistol, wet and ice encrusted but still in one piece.

  The finding of the pistol set my thinking on a new tack. Perhaps the Shaw boys hadn’t thrown their lives away for naught after all. A plan for getting Zelda out of danger began shaping in the back of my mind. Giant or not, and trail savvy aside, Stillwagon had surely lost three or four days making our rendezvous because of the norther. That delay gave Zelda a fighting chance.

  To reach home alone Zelda needed a weapon, heavy coat, and a haversack of vittles. The belt pistol I’d found and the buffalo hide cut down to size provided the first two. As for the third, I could hunt and rustle trail larder.

  Stillwagon probably wouldn’t show until the twenty-first or -second. Today being the eighteenth, I’d hunt tomorrow. Early the next morning I’d guide Zelda south a full day, close as I dared draw to the whites seeking Matthan Hannar’s scalp, and detail for her the river pathway from our parting to the Shaw cabin. With a gun, coat, and food, Zelda could sit out a new storm or defend herself and be at the Shaw cabin within the week at the latest.

  My mood lifted every step along the ice of Johnathan Creek. It had become apparent during my burial mission Zelda and Abel must never meet. From his point of view I offered Abel something useful—a strong back, long rifle, and desperate reasons for siding him. Zelda, on the other hand, posed a real threat. She could tell the truth and hang us all. And Stillwagon had his druthers with women in dire circumstances as he did with lesser men—without hesitation, Whatever else Zelda had endured, including my well-intentioned blunderings this morning, being an Injun captive was not nearly as deadly as being a female prisoner of Abel Stillwagon. He’d see through her “boy” sham instantly.

  I was almost high-stepping nearing the rendezvous tree. Smoke puffed from the smoke hole. I circled once about at a distance. No fresh sign anywhere.

  Twilight cast an orange glow on the snow. I called out and Zelda answered, her return hello heavy with relief. She’d been aware of my approach, which pleased me.

  The scene inside tempered my excitement. The pot that wouldn’t be discarded steamed over the fire. But the hearth logs and branch stock had been restacked, leaving a single enlarged spot of bare ground on the far side of the fire. Zelda stood over there, buckskin clothing spot-washed and brushed clean as could be. Fresh bronze skin protruded at her throat and wrist cuffs. She’d scrubbed herself and smelled like fresh mint. A bright ribbon across her forehead peeked from beneath her close-cropped yellow-brown hair. Her cheeks blushed red without pinching or rouge. She flat took my breath away and she knew it. A smile as inviting as virgin snow turned the corners of her full-lipped mouth.

  “The meal be ready like I promised.” She tamped the ground beside her with a moccasined foot. “Sit here and I’ll serve you.”

  Completely unsettled and sweating like a plow horse, I placed the long rifle and ice-encrusted pistol on the hearth logs and edged around the steaming kettle. What she intended or where she was headed had me baffled, but I heeded her wishes.

  She served me and I ate, eyes fixed on her bronze features. I’d anticipated hard and fast questioning about Zed and Zeb, and I wanted to pound my chest and play the hero with my grand plan for whisking her home safe and sound. But she was totally in charge of my every thought and move: I was riding the wagon, not driving the horses.

  She handed, me a noggin of bark tea, a saintly offering seeing as how my throat was drier than a drought-starved weed patch.

  “You found Zed and Zeb?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Yes’m,” I answered between gulps, amazed at how my heart hammered. I licked my lips.

  “Be they gone?” she asked very quietly.

  “Yes’m,” I croaked, not sure how much to tell her.

  “Did they die proud?”

  “That they did.”

  “You saw to them?”

  “I covered them with rock best I could and said a prayer over them.”

  She bowed her head briefly and said, “Thank you. I trusted you’d not fail me.”

  With that admission the subject of her brothers seemed settled to her satisfaction. Zelda smiled and brushed my cheek with her fingers. “You know, Matthan, your jaw be mighty square and your face a mite long, but the brow ain’t too heavy and them eyes plumb bore through a girl.”

  Never before had she deliberately touched me.

  She’d hear my heart pounding any second and brand me a fool. I drew back from her hand.

  “Sit easy, tall man, I’ll not bite you.”

  Zelda lifted the kettle from the fire, got comfortable with legs crossed, and reached for the noggin and a share of bark tea.

  She sipped and swished the tea in her mouth, face creasing with pleasure.

  In a calm voice I told Zelda how I’d stepped on the buried pistol, how that untoward incident fostered a plan for her safe return downriver, how that plan would protect her from Abel’s wrath and unseemly desires, how I’d help her home sure as sunrise.

  Zelda heard me out. When I finished, a single tear spilled from the corner of her eye. She swiped it away and said, “Don’t surprise me none. You’d never abuse a girl nor let her be mistreated.”

  My chest swelled. Her belief in my true feelings about her kind soothed lingering guilt about the harsh treatment I’d doled out earlier.

  She placed the empty noggin with the kettle. “Matthan, shuck your greatcoat. We’ll need it for a blanket along with the buffalo hide. You best see to yourself outside, then barricade the door, don’t you know.”

  I shed the coat, bolted through the entryway hole, and gulped a heap of night air. I expected a hail of laughter to follow right behind, but all was quiet inside. Soon as my breathing slowed I removed my frock and scoured face, neck, arms, and shoulders with snow, dancing with cold.

  Before I finished I stopped still as a startled elk. If I stepped back inside I realized my life would be forever different no matter what took place between us. When you started across a shaky bridge, you made the far bank or took a powerful dunking. Either way there was no turning back.

  An owl whirred overhead, seeking food as he did every night. It came on me some things were as inevitable as the owl’s nocturnal hunt. I was here and she was here. Tonight was tonight . . . and tomorrow was tomorrow.

  I slipped the frock over my head and stepped back inside.

  The fire burned low, embers waxing bright then dull. I positioned the hearth log and barricaded the doorway with branches to keep varmints at bay. When I turned, Zelda said, “Come here, Matthan. I be cold.”

  That was nigh onto impossible to believe. After all, she had both the greatcoat and buffalo robe. When I circled the fire she swept back the robe, reached for my arm, and tugged me down beside her. Soon as I was in place, she covered us both over and snuggled against me.

  “Hold me tight, Matthan.”

  I lay hold with both arms, smelling her hair and the scent of mint.

  She passed an arm round my neck and said slowly, lips moving against my chest, “Don’t think poorly of me, tall man. There be wonders a woman has to know the truth of least once in her life, don’t she now.”

  And the night began.

  Chapter 14

 
January 19

  Cold metal jabbed my cheek and awakened my senses. Groggy with sleep, I turned facedown, but the sharp jabbing pressure persisted. I pried an eye open, thoroughly puzzled.

  The double click of a pistol cocking replaced puzzlement with outright alarm.

  Abel Stillwagon had his unannounced partner dead in his sights, caught abed unarmed, was my first thought.

  The pistol was withdrawn and a familiar voice said, “Fret not, tall man, I don’t aim to shoot you, just be sure you keep your promises.”

  Anger cold as the pistol barrel clogged my tongue. I rolled into a sitting position. Zelda sat on the last hearth log, framed by morning light through the door hole, aiming the weapon I’d so obliging provided dead center on my bare chest.

  “Overslept again. Won’t never learn, will you now.”

  The pistol had been dried, cleaned, loaded, and primed, undoubtedly with powder and ball from my horn and shot pouch. The end of the yawning muzzle was just beyond reach. Dangerous, this female. She’d shoot me if I gave her cause, last night or no last night. Never two mornings alike, I reminded myself, never.

  I donned my frock, hoping her grip would waver. She held steady as a rock. “All right, what is it you want from me?”

  Her face hardened, green eyes deadly serious.

  “Let me hear you say it one more time. I won’t have you think me a weak-willed hussy not deservin’ of proper respect and throw me over.”

  My mind reeled in wonderment. It was my turn to smile. “I’ll help you back to your paw. I’ll keep my promises, just like you have.”

  She uncocked the pistol with both hands. I reached for the weapon, but Zelda pulled back. “No need for a woman to surrender her protection, be there now?”

  I nodded agreeably. Long as the hammer wasn’t dogged back, she was safe to be around unless riled over something.

  Zelda stewed the last of the venison bones and rabbit meat, and brewed bark tea in the noggin while I made a scout round about. The air was cold but slightly warmer than yesterday. The thaw continued. Warmer weather meant better hunting. A kill today would stock Zelda’s trail larder and tide me over till Stillwagon arrived.