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  My clutching grip froze in place. God’s bones, a woman! How the devil had a woman become prisoner to Injun horse thieves? And more astounding, why had they burdened themselves with her while fleeing in the depths of the night?

  My subsequent squeeze to make certain I wasn’t mistaken was my undoing. The bound hands resting on the ground above the former prisoner’s now hatless head flew upward in a blurring arc. Bent over as I was, I made a perfect target. Flesh slapped bare flesh, and heat blossomed on my cheek.

  Stunned though I was, I’d survived enough brawls with my male counterparts to know what was coming next. The slap had turned her onto her backside and, sure enough, the knee I quickly raised caught her kick short of my vitals. It was mean and had to hurt, but I lowered my weight onto her legs, pinning them flat before she tried the same with her other foot.

  Damn vixen, she’d been fooling me all the while!

  I lay hold of her lashed wrists, then bent over her again till my lips brushed the leather gag covering her mouth. The curve of her cheekbones gleamed in the moonlight. The memory of that firm breast still fresh and vivid, I can’t claim I didn’t wonder how she would look with the gag removed. But I’d no intention of untying it any time soon.

  She stilled completely, eyes boring into mine. “I’m white and a friend. You understand what I’m saying here?”

  When I got not a hint of a yea or nay from her, my temper grew foul. “Nod or I’ll slap you liken you did me. Damned if I won’t!”

  She nodded sharply.

  “Good girl,” I acknowledged. “There’s horses and more help just over this hill. It may not suit you, but I’m gonna lead you there just as you be so we won’t get separated in the dark. An’ we’ll leave that gag stay put, too. Thataway, you take a spill, you won’t yell out and tell the Injuns where we be. You understand?”

  Her head cocked to one side and I swear I saw red darken those gleaming cheekbones. She didn’t like it even a little bit. I straightened, raised an open palm in a threatening manner, and without further delay, she gave me the nod I sought.

  It crossed my mind that it would be a right smart idea if I were prepared for an assault by tongue and anything handy that she could throw whenever I did cut her loose. I suspected this particular female wasn’t inclined to suffer insult easily under any circumstances.

  Injun calls in the creek bed floated to my ear. They had discovered their captive was missing. They would search close about, then upstream since that was the quickest escape route for anyone fleeing them. And while the redsticks nosed around a tad and moseyed the wrong direction, we would sally over the hill, rejoin Hardy, and withdraw a distance down the Miami. The enemy wouldn’t hunt futilely for long, for St. Clair’s troops might be in rapid pursuit of their lost mounts. They’d want to be across the river and well westward come daybreak.

  Fortune seemed to further favor us, for the moon found another cloud to slide behind. I stood in the welcome darkness, pulled my hot-tempered mistress upright, and hiked for the safety of the far hillside.

  It took only a few uphill strides for me to appreciate the litheness of my new companion. She clung within a half step of my heels and sustained without hint of a solitary falter the rapid pace I set. Whenever I halted for a quick glance and listen to the rear, she nimbly crouched out of my line of sight as if she had a string attached to my thinking. She was a girl who hadn’t spent her days tied to a hearth cooking and baking.

  Fresh shouts in Injun tongue echoed twixt our position and the creek. They had undoubtedly found sign of our passage. Tracks would be almost impossible to discern in the continuing darkness, the same with slightly disturbed brush. That left only one solid possibility—my companion’s missing hat. Cursing myself for an oversight that could result in our deaths, I resumed our upward climb.

  I kept an ear cocked best I could over my labored breathing. We had one distinct advantage in our rush to escape. The Injuns believed they were seeking an unarmed captive. Otherwise, they would have hunted silently rather than giving away their locations by yelling aloud to each other.

  Beyond the crest of the hill, I broke into a run. Down we plunged, making surprisingly little clatter for our haste. At the bottom of the incline, I stopped once more to listen. The brief respite also gave me time to slash the leather thongs binding my companion’s wrists with my knife, for if she were soon to sit a horse, I preferred she could mount on her own if need be. The gag I left to her.

  “Follow me less’n you want to travel with your Injun friends again,” I whispered hoarsely while gasping for breath.

  I was turning away to lead off along the riverbank when her loosened gag hit my hat brim and sailed past me into the darkness. “Don’t worry, you big oaf, there’s no danger of you outrunning me.”

  I took her at her word. With nary a peek her direction, I zigzagged through rocks, reedy bogs, and willows across the clearest path to where Hardy Booth waited. The complete absence of Injun sound behind us, instead of heartening me, made speed seem even more paramount. Tap Jacobs was always reminding us Downer boys that it was too late after you were dead to try and explain how you had underestimated the cleverness of the Shawnee and the Miami.

  It was Hardy Booth’s forethought that gave us any chance of escape at all.

  We came up to him on the dead run, and he was waiting with our personal mounts saddled and the horse string tied nose to tail and lined out down the riverbank. For all the merriment Hardy provoked, he could show an uncommon amount of sense in a tight situation.

  The moon bathed the river bottom with a new wash of light, and the waiting Hardy stood out like a Bible-thumping minister poised before his flock on a bright Sunday noon. His stammering, “What the hell!” at the spectacle of a strange white girl dogging my heels was overwhelmed by Injun war whoops that flowed from every quarter. A plume of red flame spewing yellow arcs of burning powder shot out of the willows flanking the horse string. At such close range, the instantaneous boom of the large-caliber musket was deafening. The ball hit Hardy twixt the shoulder blades, and he lurched toward me. His outthrust hand, reaching desperately for help, thumped limply against my chest. Then the narrow trace threading the willows erupted into a nerve-jangling jumble of whinnying, kicking, bucking horses and howling brown bodies charging from our rear brandishing spiked clubs and war axes that killed swift as any bullet.

  How many of them there were in total, seen and unseen, I was never to learn. There was no time to think. No time to scheme. No time to mount any defense. There was time for only the simplest of recourses—flight, swift and bold. And flight by foot would be too slow. It was ride out of there or die.

  I grabbed a fistful of fancy white shirt and slung my rescued captive ahead of me, straight among the neighing, bucking horses. A war ax, spinning end over end, whipped by within a finger’s width of my shoulder. The weapon’s blade, equaling the length of my forearm, struck the haunch of a panicked paint horse and sliced through hide and meat to the bone. The pain-maddened animal reared, front hooves flailing the air, and toppled over backward. I darted forward, and the tumbling paint smashed into the redsticks charging from our rear, scattering them willy-nilly like thrown sacks of flour.

  “Mount and ride, mount and ride!” I screamed.

  It was an unnecessary command, for mistress whatever-her-name needed no urging from me. Ignoring our attackers with the steadfastness of a veteran dragoon, she untied a sorrel gelding nearly as calm as herself from the middle of the horse string, grabbed his mane with both hands, bounced nimbly on one leg, and mounted Injun fashion from the right side. A slap of the rump and keening yell later, she was off into the night.

  Feeling decidedly lonely of a sudden, I bolted after her. A screeching savage burst from the willows, tomahawk raised high above his blackened countenance. Without breaking stride, I jabbed backhanded with my rifle, and the barrel snagged his slashing hatchet, sparing me a fatal wound. Then somehow, with those weapons locked together, my knife was in my other f
ist and my sweeping stab buried its razor sharpness to the hilt in the savage’s bare belly. I shoved his collapsing body aside with the knife still in place and ran on, amazed that the confines of the trace had in a flash grown utterly silent. It was as if the enemy, though superior in number, had paused to regroup.

  Hardy’s dun-colored mare proved my salvation. Where she had been since the initial shot of the ambush felled her master, I knew not. But when she veered into my path, confused and unsure which direction to flee, I seized her trailing reins and was up and into the saddle before she could shy away from me. And once she felt my weight on her back, her training came to the fore. I swear, one rap of the heels and that old girl was into a gallop.

  A musket roared, and the ball slivered leaves above my head. Branches of the close-set willows flailed my hat and shoulders. Praying the mare’s hooves found nothing that might imperil her legs, I flattened my flintlock against her neck and let her gallop all out ’round a long, tapering bend of the river. Well beyond the bend, with her wind starting to fail, I sawed her down to a fast walk and had me a gander back the way we’d come.

  Trailing hoofbeats brought my rifle to bear at full cock, but the five approaching animals were without riders. They had followed after the mare. Last in line was my own personal mount, a blaze-faced roan of three years and much speed.

  The roan’s arrival put a whole new slant on things. He could outdistance anything on four legs north of the Ohio . . . or damn near. I still had my rifle, my shot pouch, and my horn. And, most importantly, I still had my hair. To say I felt a heap better about my prospects of gaining Fort Hamilton alive than I had mere minutes ago wouldn’t have done justice to the elation coursing through me right then. All I had to do was straddle Blue and light a shuck directly away from those murdering redsticks.

  That’s all I truly had to do to ensure my own safety: mount Blue and light a shuck. But that wasn’t in the toss of the bones for me, leastways not for a while yet. Hardy Booth, who’d been my best friend forever, was dead because I had chosen to play the hero. And if I was ever to enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep the balance of my days, I owed that man more than a cold grave I didn’t dare dig. I needed to complete the rescue I had undertaken that had cost Hardy his life. I needed to see mistress whatever-her-name got home wherever she belonged, or if not that, at least to Fort Hamilton where she would fall under the protection of St. Clair’s army.

  That decided, I stroked Blue’s forehead and pondered the question now of utmost importance to me: Just where the hell was mistress whatever-her-name any-by-God-how?

  Chapter 2

  Dawn till Dusk, 4 October

  When I forswore going off half-cocked and did a little thinking, I conceded that my missing female hadn’t shown a hindering lack of brains during our flight from the redsticks. She would, therefore, pursue the course of action most likely to protect her from harm, that being to put as much distance twixt herself and the enemy as fast as possible. And the best route for that was due south along the river trace on which I stood, the opposite direction the savages had been traveling.

  The moon tailed off to the west. The first gray fingers of morning fog poked among the willows. I checked the priming in the firing pan of my flintlock, lined out the extra horses, mounted Blue and, keeping an alert eye on my back trail, set off due south my ownself.

  I watched left and right as well as ahead, and it didn’t prove any great chore to locate mistress whatever-her-name. It was that fancy white satiny shirt that fixed her location for me. Hell’s bells, it had probably appeared bright as a five-candle lanthorn to the redsticks during our moonlit rush to rejoin Hardy.

  That notion pinked my dander nicely, and I deliberately rode past the large beech trunk from behind which part of a billowy white sleeve protruded. As I anticipated, she came charging after me once she was certain who I was.

  “Whoa up, mister! Whoa now!”

  Though no less concerned than before that the savages might be hot on our trail, I nevertheless didn’t get in any hurry reining to a halt. I turned slowly in the saddle and, bless me, she was already within a yard of Blue’s rump. She stopped beside my stirrup, and let me tell you, in the yellow tinge of the emerging dawn, her beauty, seen for the first time full blown, dampened my anger powerfully quick.

  The braided pigtail so dark in the night hung from hair no red sunset could match for brilliance. And if her hair didn’t freeze a man’s gaze, the features below it certainly would have. High cheekbones lightly dusted with freckles and arching brows framed eyes blue as the summer sky after a clearing rain. A finely bridged nose flared outward above lips full and nearly as afire as her hair, and skin as delicate and unlined as that of her cheekbones covered the slant of her tanned jaw and slightly square chin.

  The balance of her also passed muster with plenty to spare. Substantial breasts bowed the front of her shirt. The span of her waist didn’t exceed what both my hands could circle, while the girth of her hips rivaled that of her chest. At her nether end, past the full-length breeches encasing her legs, slim ankles disappeared into beaded moccasins.

  It didn’t sway my opinion any that the sleeve of her shirt was frayed at the seam or that the garment showed much wear and considerable abuse. Neither did the bagginess of her breeches, which indicated they might have once belonged to someone else. She was, to quote Tap Jacobs, a female of such uncommon beauty she could, without trying overly much, have you talking to yourself while you drowned in your own drool.

  Not me, I vowed silently. I spoke before I felt my lips getting wet of their own accord. Besides, much as I was enjoying it, we couldn’t spend the morning staring at each other. “You got a name?”

  My gruffness wrung a frown from her. “Green. Erin Green,” she answered, defiance edging her voice. She wasn’t about to be bullied. “And who might you be?”

  “Ethan Downer,” I informed her. “Where do you hail from?”

  My lack of manners didn’t set well with her, but I was mighty anxious to get moving. “I was taken near Fort Hamilton.”

  “Good. I’m bound there with what’s left of my horse string. I’ll see you home.”

  “Oh, I’m not from this part of the country. My family’s traveling with General St. Clair’s army.”

  “That’s even better. These horses,” I said with a sweep of the arm behind me, “or what’s left of them, were Kentucky-bought for the general’s officers. Where’s the sorrel you rode off astride?”

  “Tied in the trees where I hid him.”

  “He pull up lame on yuh?”

  “No,” she responded. “I saw no reason to run him to death and leave myself afoot.”

  I couldn’t argue the sense of that. She was obviously no stranger to horses. “Get your sorrel an’ we’ll make tracks on down the trace.”

  Her brow furrowed deeper than before. “That’s the opposite direction of the fort! Why that direction?”

  My face grew hot. I wasn’t accustomed to women challenging me as to the best means of fleeing Injuns, no matter how beautiful the female. “There’s a heap fewer savages to treat with if we travel south, that’s why.”

  Her eyes bored into mine as they had in the dark last night. “The Shawnee won’t stay after me. They took me ’cause my red hair fascinated one of them. His fellows fussed, but my admirer must have been in command. He glared good and hard at them, and they tied me on a horse and away we went. Now that you’ve freed me, I doubt they’ll persist in chasing after me. They were pushing those stolen horses mighty fast.”

  I leaned my face closer to hers. “Since you’ve already got everythin’ figured to the nubbin, what should we do next, Colonel Green?”

  She returned my slight full bore. “Well, Private Downer, we might wait here for an hour or two till the Shawnee carry off their dead and drive their stolen stock west of the river. Then we can travel north past Dunlap Station, the shortest route to Fort Hamilton. We could be there by dark, we don’t malinger.”

  “So
unds as if you know this country. Or is it just what you’ve overheard?”

  “My mother and I were aboard one of the boats that ferried the lumber up the Miami to complete the fort. That was just two weeks ago.”

  I studied on what she’d said. For a girl, she reasoned right fine, whether I liked the idea or not. She had sand in her craw, this one did. She showed not the slightest blush or hesitation when it came to speaking her mind. And she had a temper best left unprovoked.

  Damnation, I hated backing water a single finger length. But if we waited for the Shawnee to clear out as she suggested and went north, she’d be safely home at her mother’s fire by nightfall . . . and out of my hair.

  I straightened in the saddle. “All right, we’ll risk the Injuns following us and have a go at it your way. I’m near to starved, anyhow. I’ll fetch the sorrel and tend to the animals. You’ll find victuals in the saddlebags of Hardy’s dun mare.”

  With neither the haughty gloat nor gleeful smile of triumph I expected, Mistress Erin Green nodded politely and walked down the line of horses to the mare. Being male through and through, I couldn’t help but take serious notice how smoothly her hips moved, even in those baggy pants. Fortunately, I took after the missing sorrel before she spied my gaping mouth or I fell off Blue and declared myself a total fool. She could put a sweat on a man like no woman I’d ever seen or heard tell of. She made those handsome Carroll twins from beyond our ridge look like woods hogs covered with warts.

  Dawn light slanted through red and yellow leaves. A light breeze curled the morning fog in gray swirls low to the ground. The air smelled of rain, same as yesterday morning. I led the horses through a narrow break in the bank willows and watered each in turn, flintlock clutched in off hand throughout. Watering completed, I tied the remainder of the string in the order they would travel. Then I let myself think of victuals.