Lori Benton (39 page)

Joseph sat in concealment on a ridge north of the mill, watching the track just above the structure where it curved away eastward toward Burning Sky’s distant fields. The sun had dipped behind the hills to the west. Daylight was dimming. He bent his head to peer through the laurel thicket
that concealed him, and there went the deserter, swinging into the saddle and leaving the mill yard, headed back along the short but lonely stretch of track to the people called Waring, who had taken him in as groom.

Do it now
, half of Joseph’s mind urged.
Do not let him reach his place of refuge this night. Take the man and be gone with him to Fort Stanwix
.

The other half of his mind had the whole of his heart on its side, and was shouting louder—as it had since the Scotsman left.
Go to her
, it was saying.
See if she has changed her mind about being Burning Sky
.

That half of his mind won the battle. If Crane was at the mill again on the morrow, Joseph would take him at this hour, on his homeward journey. If all went as he hoped—oh, those sprouting wings hope had—Burning Sky and the children would be waiting for him, secured away from the village, when he brought the deserter along, and they would all leave this place together.

He did not go by the woodland track but kept it in sight as he made a slower way threading his horse through timber and brush. He wasn’t far past the turn the track took above the mill when the thudding of hooves alerted him to a rider’s approach. He slid from the mare’s back to stroke her muzzle and keep her quiet. His own heart thumped a beat of alarm, and the place in his side the ball had torn pulled with a prickling ache, as if in warning. Had he been seen again?

He waited, eyes fixed on the brush that screened the track, which showed as a lighter patch beyond the darkening woods, a stone’s throw away. He didn’t see the horse, but the disembodied head and shoulders of its rider passed through a break in the brush with the up-and-down motion of an easy trot.

A face in profile. Bushy black hair tailed below a hat. Broad shoulders. Heavy arms and chest.

The deserter wasn’t the only Shiloh man Joseph had come to recognize
on site. It was the smith, the one the Scotsman had lodged with. The man rode with purpose, though not with haste.

Joseph knew of no one else living out that way. Only Burning Sky. Why would the smith be going to see her? An errand for the Scotsman?

He grasped a fistful of mane, ready to mount up again, annoyed as much as curious. He would have to wait until the man left her cabin before he could speak to Burning Sky. He’d tensed to swing onto the horse’s back when he heard another rider coming along behind the smith. This one was moving fast.

Joseph shifted to where he could see the track, in time to glimpse the passing rider. Despite the swiftness of it, despite the failing light, he knew this horseman with more surety than he had the first. Aram Crane hadn’t ridden home but doubled back to the track above the mill.

Was it the smith he’d been waiting for all this time?

Hearing a shout, then a scuffling of hooves as if both horses had paused, Joseph swung onto the mare, excitement singing through his blood. He was almost to the edge of the darkening woods when one of the riders came racing back toward the village.

Crane was past him when Joseph crashed the mare through the wooded strip, kicked her into a gallop on the open track, and tugged the tomahawk from his sash. Crane slowed and wheeled his horse. Joseph glimpsed wild eyes in a white face too startled to cry out, before he struck with the flat of the blade, a blow to the head measured to daze, not kill.

Crane landed on the dusty track and did not move.

Grasping the reins of the man’s horse, Joseph slid down to settle the quivering creature, then slung his prisoner across its saddle, bound him, and led both horses off the track to the woods’ edge.

He paused to look down the road for sign of the smith but couldn’t see far in the gathering twilight. Nothing stirred on the track. He’d taken his quarry in near silence. No doubt the smith was already halfway to Burning Sky’s cabin.

He’d also taken his quarry on impulse and was now revising his plans. He wouldn’t take Crane to Burning Sky or risk lingering near Shiloh where the man could be aided or rescued, and so was more than ever certain his earlier journey to Fort Stanwix had been wise. The Scotsman was gone. The deserter was in custody. And now Thayendanegea was near. Joseph would ride straight to Fort Stanwix and give the deserter over to his war chief, if Thayendanegea was amenable—and there was little doubt in Joseph’s mind that he would be.

Then he would return and do all in his power to persuade Willa Obenchain to leave this place, come back to the People, be Burning Sky again. Forever.

For the first time since he found her with the Scotsman in her cabin, Joseph dared to believe it could happen that way.

Before the next dawn, a snag in the hasty capture of Crane made itself apparent. Having decided to take the deserter to Fort Stanwix in hope of catching the Mohawk delegation before they returned to Niagara, Joseph found himself forced to hunt to feed him. Many miles west of Shiloh, he left the deserter tied to a tree, taking both horses and Crane’s shoes as precautions against escape.

In the gray before sunrise, as the last ribbon of pink faded from the brightening eastern sky, he set out, pausing beneath a beech tree to swallow a few shriveled huckleberries—all that remained of his provisions. He was still leaning against the smooth trunk when a line of turkeys ambled into view.

Forgoing the rifle for silence’s sake, he spent three arrows and gained two hens before the birds scattered. As he retrieved the third arrow, through his mind flashed the image of himself thrusting it through the neck of his prisoner. He was meant to return Crane alive or dead. Dead was more tempting than it had been one sleep ago.

Once Crane regained his senses after his capture and was made to understand his situation, Joseph had halted the horses long enough to set him upright in the saddle, securing him with hands bound, ankles tied beneath the horse’s belly, another rope at his neck, which Joseph held like a leash.

“Good dog.” He’d been unable to resist giving Crane’s knee a pat, grinning as the man cursed him roundly and jerked in a futile attempt at a kick.

“Folk in Shiloh know about you.” Crane glared in the moonlight as Joseph swung onto his mare and gave lead reins and neck rope a tug. Crane grunted at the pull, coughed, and spat. “They know you’ve been skulking about. Important folk. Colonel Waring, for one.”

The deserter had taken pains to alter his speech. He sounded less an Englishman now than he did the people he’d attempted to hide among, though Joseph knew he’d been born in a place called Birmingham, over the great water in England.

He kept his tone light. “And the big yellow-haired one?”

“Was it you he shot?” Crane was silent for a time, obviously thinking, then said, “And I can guess who it was patched you up again—that Scotsman who’s been hanging around Shiloh all summer.”

Joseph made no answer to that.

“It’s known who gave you shelter too. That’s going to count against her with most, along with those half breeds she’s still got under her roof.”

Burning Sky. A coldness congealed in Joseph’s belly. He kept his gaze ahead as he picked his way through the wooded dark, brushing aside clinging webs and trailing boughs.

“She is no concern to you.”

“I suspect she is to you, though.” Crane’s voice, rising above the crackle and thud of hooves, held suggestion, and veiled threat. “Listen now … You and I could come to an agreement, one of benefit to us both.”

Joseph’s belly clenched around the cold knot. “You come along
peaceful, and I do not cave in your skull. That is the agreement between you and me.”

“There’s something I need to do east of here and—”

“East of here?” Joseph cut in placidly. “You have no food for a journey. You carry a musket, one small satchel. You are lying.”

“That’s your doing. I was headed back to Waring’s place. That cook of theirs was meant to be putting up provisions for me.”

Joseph thought about this as he picked their slow way, a vague uneasiness stirring at the back of his mind.
East of here …
where the Scotsman had been headed?

Over his shoulder he asked, “What were you doing on that track above the mill?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Crane said, with more than a little sarcasm.

“Then we have no more to say to each other.”

“Just hear me out.” Crane’s voice tightened with rage and what sounded like fear. “Don’t take me back to Niagara and I give you my word to leave the Obenchain woman alone. I’ll even do what I can to keep Waring from pestering her more.”

What did the deserter think his word was worth? Joseph ducked as pine branches brushed his head, glancing back as they hit Crane in the face. Then the mare dipped and swayed and carried them down into a clearing bright with moonlight.

Crane had kept his seat.

More
, he had said.

“What pestering has he done?” Joseph hoped he wouldn’t have to return and kill the yellow-haired giant, if Burning Sky was still so stubborn as to want to stay among such people.

Crane did not answer his question. Nearly across the clearing, Joseph turned his horse back until they were knee to knee. He grasped the neck rope tight. Crane had lost his hat somewhere in the night’s passage. The
forehead beneath the line of his hair showed pale in the moonlight. Tempting.

“Tell me what Yellow Hair Waring has done to her, or I take your red scalp now. They will pay me for you, either way.”

“A-all right,” Crane choked, and Joseph eased his grip. “The fool wants her, but he wants her land more. He set me to scaring her off it—but I never touched her,” he added. “Or those little half breeds.”

Joseph pictured the revulsion he felt for this man like arrows scattered on the ground. In his mind he picked them up one by one and bundled them, until he had them back in their quiver and himself under control. He turned his horse to continue on, having knowledge of the acts the deserter hinted at—the arrow in the door, the crop fire, the goat. Burning Sky and the children had weathered them all.

“Just a matter of time before someone does,” Crane added under his breath. In seconds Joseph had the man by the neck again.

“Who? Who is going to touch her?”

“Waring,” the man bit out, the stink of his breath in Joseph’s face. “Thinks he can stomach knowing what you savages did to her, make a wife of her, once he’s rid of those half breeds. But I’ve seen the disgust in his face when he talks about what she—”

Joseph heard no more, for that was when he knocked the man senseless again.

Crane had been coming around to wakefulness as he was leaving to hunt—too late to fight the gag or the ropes Joseph knotted behind the tree, knots that would make struggling only draw them tighter. In the dark he’d rifled through the man’s belongings, taking his shot bag and musket as well as his shoes, but leaving what other possessions the man had had on him. Precautions only. The man could not get himself free.