LeClerc 03 - Wild Savage Heart (10 page)

“Ah, Mrs. Royse,” Hawk chuckled, “you could have waited until summer to have a run-in with a skunk. At least then the warm water would have been a pleasure instead of continuing with the punishment.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time.” She wanted to yell at him to get started but her eyes nearly popped out of her head when he removed his shirt and began unlacing his knee-high moccasins.

“What … “ she had to clear her throat before she could speak when his hands reached for the lacings of his pants. “What do you think you’re doing?” Hawk pushed his pants down his long legs, revealing a breechcloth riding very low on his narrow hips. As he slowly followed her into the river, carrying the smelly pot of boiled roots and weeds, her eyes widened alarmingly.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed again.

“I’m not about to ruin a good set of clothes by getting this mess on them.” He indicated the pot in his hands.

“You aren’t going to wash me!”

His eyes sparkled and strong white teeth flashed as a smile lit Hawk’s sculptured face. “Only your hair, Mrs. Royse,” he reassured her. “The rest I’ll leave to you.”

Still unsure of his intentions, Molly nonetheless followed his instructions. She bent and wet her long hair then choked as he worked in the smelly concoction.

Molly was amazed by his gentleness; a characteristic that seemed out of place with his appearance. His thick, sleek hair hung to his shoulders and his copper skin glistened. The modified breechcloth reached only to the tops of his thighs and hung low on his hips. A civilized savage, she thought to herself, the gentleness as much a part of him as the.

savagery hidden just beneath the surface.

Adam leaned against a tree watching as Hawk carefully washed Molly’s hair. He noticed that she held the quilt firmly beneath her chin and that neither of them spoke. Even from his place on the bank he could smell the combined odors of skunk and the potion Hawk was rubbing into Molly’s hair. With a grin, Adam decided that Hawk had gone far beyond the call of friendship.

“Having fun?”

Molly raised her head and found Adam on the river bank. She buried her face in the quilt, embarrassed and disappointed that he had returned to find her in such a situation.

“Your wife met the business end of a skunk,” Hawk supplied unnecessarily. He pushed her head into the water and rinsed her hair several times before he was satisfied that he’d removed the herbal mixture.

Adam couldn’t stifle the laugh he felt building in his chest. “I seem to remember her talking about skunks just the other night.”

Molly raised her head. “This is not funny.”

“You seemed to think skunks had some merit.” Hawk watched as a silent exchange seemed to pass between husband and wife. He was further mystified when Molly grinned.

“So this is my fault?” she asked cheekily.

“My mama always said to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.”

“This isn’t exactly the way I’d planned!” Shaking his head at their baffling conversation, Hawk slowly left the water. “She’s all yours.”

“Yes, she is,” Adam agreed, love filling his heart for the woman who stood in the cold water, greatly resembling a drowned rat.

Hawk handed the pot to Adam as he climbed out of the river. “Wash, repeatedly, until she can’t take the cold water any longer. This won’t get rid of the smell entirely, but at least we’ll be able to live with her until it’s gone.” He grabbed his clothes and walked up the trail.

“Thank you, Mr. Hawk,” Molly called from the water.

“You are most welcome, Mrs. Royse,” Hawk replied with a little bow conspicuously incongruous with his forbidding attire.

Later that evening, Molly snuggled against Adam, her head resting on his shoulder. The odor of skunk, no longer so overpoweringly obnoxious, drifted past her nose.

“I can sleep somewhere else,” she volunteered, resigned to many long, lonely nights alone.

“Ah, Molly mine, would you really force me to sleep alone?”

“But Adam, I stink!”

He grinned and hugged her tighter, “I can’t argue with that, but sweetheart, I’ve gotten into the habit of sleeping with you. I don’t think I can sleep alone.”

“Are you sure? Y ou’re not just saying that to make me happy?”

“Molly,” his voice lost all signs of humor, “I plan to spend the rest of my life making you happy. I intend to surround you with love until you’ve forgotten a past life that didn’t include me.” He raised her head and kissed her gently.

“I love you, Adam,” she whispered. “Don’t ever leave me.”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to. You’re part of me now.”

“Promise? Promise you’ll always love me and never leave me?”

“I promise, Molly mine, with all my heart.”

CHAPTER SIX

Molly rode Adam’s horse beside the wagon, careful to keep a distance between her and the men. Even though the smell had dissipated considerably with the help of Hawk’s concoction, she was still conscious of the lingering odor and she continued to be embarrassed. Earlier that morning she had insisted on taking another bath with the remaining herbal mixture. While the men waited patiently, Molly clenched her teeth against the early morning chill of the water as she washed her hair and body again.

Promising to return for a visit, they took their leave from the Price family and headed several miles north to the land Adam had purchased the day before. Molly’s excitement was slightly diminished by the encounter with the skunk but she held her head high and waited to see where her new home was to be.

By midafternoon they pulled the lumbering wagon to a halt, and Adam helped Molly dismount from the horse. Taking her hand in his, they walked to a natural clearing.

“This is ours, Molly mine!” he said with a wide grin.

Molly looked around her with new awareness. It was truly a beautiful spot. Huge trees climbed into the sky and wild flowers waved their colorful heads in the breeze. Knee-high grass, so green it vied with the cobalt sky for supremacy, undulated with the wind like gentle waves rolling toward shore. Hidden by the forest of trees, a stream babbled to reveal its presence, and in the distance, as always, the blue mountains held majestic reign.

“Where do you want your house, wife?” Adam asked. “Over there … or there … or how about there?” He pointed in several directions, all of which looked perfect to Molly. “There’s also at least three springs with water so cold it hurts your teeth. We’ll build a springhouse over one for you to store things that keep better in the cool.”

“Oh, Adam, it’s perfect!”Molly wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. He picked her up and swung her around and around in a circle until they were both dizzy. When he set her on her feet she pulled free of his hold and stepped back several paces. Looking at each other, they began to laugh with the abandon of small children, delighted by their homesite, their enthusiasm for life and their love for each other.

“The cabin and springhouse will have to wait for a while yet,” Hawk interrupted. “We’ll start breaking up the ground for the garden tomorrow. Today we’ll set up a temporary bush corral for the livestock.”

The three people looked at each other, all of them understanding the amount of work that would need to be completed before winter.

“Well, just don’t stand there,” Molly quipped, hands on hips. “Let’s get to it!”

The temporary corral took all afternoon for them to build. Hawk selected a spot with two sides already filled with dense underbrush while Adam began cutting down massive amounts of brush. Molly’s job was to ferry the cut bushes to Hawk. He then wove them into a secure structure. He explained to her that the animals would eat the leaves from the branches, but if they were placed correctly the corral would hinder the animals from wandering off. He was emphatic that a permanent corral would be the first thing to be built once the garden was in place.

“You have to protect and care for your animals,” he said. “Out here they aren’t easily replaced and they could mean the difference between life and death.”

At dinner that evening, Hawk carefully laid out the schedule of which things should be done first and which could wait. Neither Molly or Adam disagreed with him, after all, this was the reason they needed him. However, when the cabin came at the bottom of the list, Molly couldn’t help questioning it.

“Is there a dead tree around here?” she asked innocently.

“There’s a lot of dead trees, Molly mine. Why?”

“I just wondered if there was one big enough for us to live in. With all the work that needs to be done it sounds like it’ll be next summer before we get to the cabin.”

“You’ll have your cabin before winter,” Hawk promised quietly. “It won’t be fancy but it’ll keep the snow off you.”

“That’s all I need!” Molly replied cheerfully. “Now, if you’ll be so kind as to fix some more of that God-awful-smelling stuff, I’ll go take a bath.”

They worked from sunup to sundown every day, quitting only when darkness made it dangerous for them to continue. A natural clearing on a level portion of the hill seemed the perfect spot to locate the garden. Adam walked behind one of the oxen pulling the plow while Hawk hitched up the other one to remove larger rocks and the stumps of a few trees they had cut down.

Molly’s job was to remove the numerous small rocks from the plowed-up dirt and stack them neatly for later use. The first couple of days were filled with pain and physical exhaustion. She was unaware that her strength was slowly increasing. But then one evening she found that she was tired but not extremely so. A feeling of pride and accomplishment filled her at the knowledge that she could be a help rather than a hindrance to Adam.

Even the evenings were far from idle. Hawk’s lessons began again. He had Adam chop down a few hickory saplings and make handles for the shovel and ax heads they had brought from Charleston. Molly’s job was to clear the smaller branches from small chestnut trees that Hawk intended to use as fence rails for the corral.

Hawk began to make some of the tools that would be necessary when actual building began. He carefully shaped handles for hammers, hatchets and adzes, axlike tools with a curved blade, used for shaping and smoothing a plank.

The number of tools Hawk created amazed Molly. She had thought that only an ax would be necessary to build their cabin. Patiently, as they all worked on their assigned chores. Hawk explained what each tool was and how it worked. Most of the iron tool heads had been purchased in Charleston without handles to help lighten the load in the wagon.

“How do you know so much about tools?” Molly asked as she laid aside one small fence log and reached for another. “I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning that Indians did a lot of woodworking.”

“Actually, Mrs. Royse,” Hawk replied quietly, “before they moved further west to escape the destruction of whites, my people built permanent settlements with log homes and big gardens.” He was quiet for several long minutes as he thought of the stories told to him by Linsey and Luc of the place where he had been born but which he had never seen. “Now my people are more nomadic and their homes aren’t built for permanence as they once were.

“However, you are correct, I didn’t learn woodworking from them. My stepfather is proficient with woodworker’s tools. Some of the pieces of furniture he has built are true works of art. He put those tools in my hands when I was a small child and taught me how to use them.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Molly thought of the difficulties Hawk had faced as a child. “It must have been confusing for you, being raised by white step-parents and Indian parents.”

“Not until I ventured into the city,” Hawk answered. “I thought it was quite natural to have two sets of parents who lived such disparate lives.

“I would spend months living with Linsey and Luc, sleeping in a feather bed, learning to read and write and how to live as a white man. Then my father would come for me and I’d return to his village and spend months sleeping under the stars, learning to hunt and track, hearing the stories told by the old ones of a way of life that would never be again.

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Mrs. Royse,” his voice softened as he correctly interpreted the sympathy in her voice. “I had the best of both worlds. Every child should be raised in such a manner, for surely his life would be richer for knowing how others live.” Molly realized she had learned more about Hawk in the last few minutes than she had known in all the months before. His love and pride for both of his families was clearly evident in his voice and she was almost envious that her childhood had not been the same.

Once the garden was plowed, the men began the process of building the corral while Molly planted. Corn, squash, peas and several different kinds of beans were sown in neat parallel rows. When the last seeds were in the ground, Molly sighed with satisfaction. With, the grace of God and a little rain, they’d have plenty of food to see them through the winter.

The garden and the corral were both finished the same day, but Hawk, instead of allowing them to rest, insisted they start the next project, and then the next, working methodically until finally the day arrived when they began felling trees for the cabin.

As the two men chopped down one tree after another it became Molly’s job to clean it of its branches. She quickly grew adept with the small hand ax and even managed the larger one when necessary.