Over the Misty Mountains (7 page)

Rhoda, accustomed to such treatment from the respectable members of Williamsburg society, had grown stubborn. She had saved enough money for a new dress. She met the woman’s stare and said coolly, “I would like to see the materials that you have.”

“I don’t think you could afford them.”

Rhoda pulled out her purse and let the gold sovereigns clink in her hand. “I can afford it, but I doubt if you have anything good enough for me.”

It had been a clash of wills that had somehow symbolized Rhoda’s life. In the end, she had walked out of the shop angered by the woman’s attitude and somewhat surprised at her own tenacity.
You’d think I’d be used to being treated like dirt
, she thought as she made her way through the snow that covered the sidewalks. Sleds passed on the main part of the wide streets, and there was a strange quietness as the snow muffled ordinary sounds.

Her head ached slightly, for she had drunk far too much the night before. Jacques Cartier had appeared after one of his long absences and had forced her to get drunk with him. As always, the remembrance of what had ensued shamed her, and she thought, not for the first time, of some way to flee from the life that she was leading. Her family came to mind now, scattered and making lives of their own. She knew they would be ashamed of her if they knew she had become a common doxie. As she moved along the street, she forced her mind to go blank.

One day is just like another
, she thought,
and it’ll never be any different
.

“Hello, Rhoda.”

Looking quickly around, Rhoda saw Josh Spencer, and her eyes lit up. “Hello, Josh.”

“Going shopping?”

“Just looking mostly.” Rhoda studied his attire, taking in the coonskin cap, the long hunting coat that fell to his knees, and the heavy leggings and moccasins. “What are you all dressed up for? Going hunting again?”

“I’m leaving Williamsburg, Rhoda.”

A sense of disappointment came over her. She had never referred to the past, for she was sure he did not remember her as a child.
All he knows
, she thought bitterly,
is that I’m a loose woman in a tavern
. However, he had always been kind to her, and perhaps because he had never bought her services, she had learned to admire him very much.

She looked up quickly, wondering if he still remembered the brawl he had had with Cartier, but she did not mention it. “Where are you going?”

With a wide gesture of his arm, Josh said, “Over there!”

She followed his gaze and said, “Over the mountains?”

“That’s it. Going to see some new territory. Maybe I’ll look up Daniel Boone. I’m tired of being cooped up in a town.”

Without thinking, Rhoda said, “I wish I could go with you. I hate this town.”

Josh looked at her suddenly. She was wearing a deep blue cloak and a hat that came down over her cheeks and ears. “You wouldn’t like it out there, Rhoda.” He reached out and grinned, touching her dark brown hair that had escaped from her bonnet. “It’s dangerous trying to live on the frontier.”

A shiver ran through Rhoda as she thought of the stories she had heard. “Aren’t you afraid? Of the wild animals, I mean?”

“Well, I don’t intend to get too friendly with ’em.” The two walked along, and Josh was cheerful enough now that the die was cast and he was on his way. “I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while.”

“I’ll miss you.”

Something plaintive and sad in her voice caught at Josh. He stopped suddenly and turned around. When she looked up at him, he saw more than he had ever seen before. He had always thought of her as a pretty girl. She displayed very few indications of the effects of her rough profession, and although he did not know her age, he guessed she could not be over seventeen or eighteen. Her eyes were opened wide, and he noticed how doelike they were and the thickness of the lashes that shaded them. She had very smooth skin, now paled by the cold weather, but her lips were rich and red. A thought came to him, and he let it stay in his mind for a moment, thinking hard before he spoke it out. “Why don’t you get away from here, Rhoda?”

“Get away?” His statement surprised her. “Where would I go?”

“Anywhere away from here. Do something else. You’re too nice a girl to be living the kind of life you do.”

“Are you going to preach at me like all the rest of the preachers in town? Your friend Paul Anderson came by and tried to talk to me the other day.”

“I guess I’m no one to preach to anybody, Rhoda,” Josh shrugged. “I believed for a time . . . but here lately, it’s just . . . well, life’s pretty short. It’s a shame to waste it.”

The same thought had occurred to Rhoda many times. She had a longing to do something different, but she had no idea what adventures the world even had to offer. She hadn’t pursued an education other than being able to read or write. She was left to the confines of her own little world. And since her world was limited to that of the tavern, she heard very few fine sentiments. Now she looked up at Josh and said simply, “I don’t know anything else to do.”

Josh said, “Why, I’ll help you. You could get a job somewhere else. Out of Williamsburg where they don’t know you. Start all over again like I’m going to do.”

“Would you take me with you to the frontier?”

Instantly Josh knew he had gone too far. “I couldn’t do that, Rhoda. In the first place, I’m a greenhorn. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve hunted a little bit around here, and I consider myself a pretty good shot, but the frontier is a harsh and unforgiving place. I’ve listened enough to those who have gone and returned to know how dangerous it is. A man has to be smarter, and quicker, and stronger than the wilderness to survive. I don’t know if I will or not. I couldn’t take a woman into a place like that.”

Josh saw the glimmer of hope die in Rhoda’s eyes. She turned again and started walking slowly away. Watching her go, he said, “I’ll see you when I get back.” But she did not turn. Somehow the incident troubled Josh Spencer. She was no more than a common prostitute. But there was a different quality in this one, and he hated to see her life come to ruin. There was something in the girl worth saving. Shrugging his shoulders with resignation, he headed toward the misty mountains.

****

“Where have you been?”

“Just out walking,” Rhoda said. She had entered the tavern again and found Cartier sitting at his usual table with a bottle of whiskey before him. He looked rough and irritable.

“Fix me something to eat!”

“All right. What do you want—eggs and bacon?”

“Anything. My stomach feels like it’s been cut open with a Chickasaw knife.” He glared over at the proprietor and asked, “What’s that rotgut you’re sellin’?”

“If you don’t like it, don’t drink here!” Dutch Hartog turned to face Cartier. He was in a rough business, and tough characters came and went. He waited for Cartier to respond, his hand on the counter. All he had to do was drop his hand to come up with either a knife or a bung starter, both of which he had used often.

Cartier stared at the thick-bodied proprietor and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. He shook his head and went back to his drinking. When Rhoda finally brought his breakfast, he gulped it down wolfishly, making guttural sounds until it was all gone. Shoving the wooden chair back, he grabbed her and pulled her down onto his lap. He kissed her roughly, and she submitted without enthusiasm.

“Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a gold coin. “Go buy yourself a new dress or something. A bonnet.”

Rhoda took the coin and bit it. She had seen that his pocket was full. “Where’d you get all that money, Jack?”

“Never mind. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“Do you ever go over the mountains?” she asked, suddenly thinking of Josh Spencer.

“Why are you askin’?”

“I just saw Josh Spencer. He’s headin’ over that way.”

A crafty look crossed the face of the trapper. He said something in French under his breath, then asked in English, “When did you see him?”

“Just now. Before I came in here.”

“Which way was he going?”

“He didn’t say. Just over the mountains. He mentioned something about Daniel Boone.”

The memory of the brawl came suddenly to Cartier, and his brutal face hardened. He was not a man to forgive easily, and filed away in his mind was the notion that someday he would get even with both Boone and Josh Spencer. “You been beddin’ down with Spencer?”

“What business is it of yours?”

The massive hand of the trapper closed on Rhoda’s back. He clenched the flesh together hard and she cried out, “Don’t! You’re hurting me!”

“I asked you a question!”

“What do you care? I don’t belong to you!”

“You do when I pay for you! Now answer me!”

“No! Let me go!”

Jacques Cartier slowly released her. Rhoda got up and gave him a frightened look, then turned and left. Cartier began drinking more heavily. He was a shrewd, crafty man who saw men like Boone and Josh Spencer as a threat to his business, which he kept mostly to himself.

“I’ll find him out there,” he said. “Then we’ll see!” he muttered. Shuddering as the raw whiskey hit his stomach, he continued to drink and began to make some kind of plans for revenge.

When Rhoda returned later in the day, she asked Dutch, “What happened to Jack Carter?”

“Don’t know. He left right after you talked to him.”

“Where was he going? Did he say?”

“He never says anything. I don’t trust that fellow,” Dutch said. “I could do without his business.”

Rhoda stepped outside of
The Brown Stag
and looked up and down the street. It had begun to snow again, and she shivered. She thought of Josh, and for one moment her heart seemed to lose some of its hardness. “I wish I could’ve gone with him,” she whispered—then she thought of what she was, and she shook her head, bitterness tingeing the sheen of her eyes and twisting her lips into a sarcastic line. “But he wouldn’t want the likes of me.”

Chapter Four

Cry of a Hawk

The face of Faith Spencer appeared as sharply and clearly in Jehoshaphat Spencer’s dream as if it were a painting set before his eyes. Unlike most dreams, in which scenes and faces floated through his mind in a ghostly fashion, the features, so long beloved, were suddenly just
there
. In one of those inexplicable moments of the dream experience, Josh simultaneously knew he was dreaming, but the face that he saw was conjured up of memories drawn from the past and had the reality of a canvas painted by a master.

He lay quietly, aware of the bitter cold that encased his body, which was no less real than the warmth that came from the image of Faith. He studied the dark brown hair that fell to her waist and was conscious of the fine lace of the light pink party gown that he had seen her wear on several occasions. Her eyes, brown and warm, and flecked with tiny touches of gold, studied him provocatively, and the lips that he had kissed a thousand times softened with compassion and then opened to speak. He was conscious also of the frailty that had drawn him to her as a young woman—yet at the same time of the spiritual strength that had been an element of her makeup as much as the color of her eyes, or the straightness of her nose, or her delicate cheekbones.

From somewhere far away, he heard sounds, high and keening, and even as the sounds brushed against the levels of his consciousness, he tried to hang on to the sensation as though it were reality. She seemed to smile at him, and then her features began to fade, and a pale iridescence gathered around her in a halolike fashion. Then slowly, but with a tragic finality, the face began to break apart. It was like an image in water that had been suddenly stirred. As the sound became louder, and the face and the image of his wife withdrew and dissolved, Josh cried out, “Faith—!”

The sound of his own voice was hoarse and desperate. Vaguely hopeless, and coming out of sleep with a rush, he was suddenly frightened—for nothing was familiar. He had gone to sleep next to the fire that he had built under a towering hemlock tree beside a frozen stream. For a long time he had lain awake watching the stars as they did their great dance across the velvety blackness of the sky. He remembered seeing the snowflakes joining the stars, different only in that their movements were faster and more active than those distant orbs of frozen fire that dotted the heavens.

Now as he came out of sleep, bitterly disappointed by the loss of the vision of Faith’s features, he was aware of a weight pressing down on him. He panicked as the thought brushed across the edge of his conscious mind,
I’ve been buried alive!
Frantically he lunged, and with a sob of relief, his arms broke through the blanket of snow that had fallen upon him. The snow was no more than six or seven inches deep, and was so light that he sat upright with a gasp and a shudder. As he brushed the snow away from his face with his forearm, he stared around in a confused fashion.

Everything was changed. It had been snowing, it seemed, all night, and now the hemlock tree overhead was laden with a shimmering mantle of white velvet. Throwing his blankets aside, he saw that at some point the branches overhead had dislodged a load of snow on the fire so that everywhere he looked a plush carpet of glistening snow met his eyes. He squinted against the brilliance of the scene and stood to his feet as the morning sun touched the tiny grains, reflecting them like jewels. He had slept in his clothes, as he had every night during his journey. Looking around he saw his horse stamping and pawing at the ground where he had tied him out with a long piece of rawhide the night before. Josh’s blankets and saddle and few belongings made a lump on the smoothness of the ground, and at once he felt a wave of disgust mixed with humor begin to rise within him.

“If you can sleep through a snowstorm, there’d be nothing to stop an Indian from walking right up to your camp and slitting your throat!” he muttered to himself.

As he began to clear away a place to build a fire, he considered the journey that he had made from Williamsburg. It had been an exhilarating time for Josh, and the farther he got from civilization, the more aware he was of the outside world.