Tom offered his hand and pulled her to stand. He peeled away
a sweaty curl pasted to her cheek and tucked it behind her ear.
“Thee must know this—I mean to share a large portion of thy
life, Maggie Duncan.”
“Aye, lad.” Maggie smiled at his slip into the Quaker-speak.
“Yer my man, an’ I’m yer woman.” She reached up on tiptoes
and kissed him quick on the lips.
“Good.” Tom squeezed her hand. “Then let’s away.”
H
Noolektokie decided to cure the hide with the hair on and tiny
tail intact—to remind the Shawano of the fawn’s pure- white
beauty, and to prove to future generations that they had indeed
been blessed by the presence of such a magical being.
She spread the flayed fawn skin on the ground and cut a mea-
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
381
sured series of small slits around its perimeter. Using buckskin
thong, she laced the skin through the slits and around a sturdy pole
frame, stretching the hide taut and even, the line of the spine true to
center. Noolektokie leaned the prepared frame against a large oak.
Normally when working hides, she would sit with other women
and they would chitter like gray squirrels about children, husbands,
and recipes. Today, none of the other women joined her.
She sank down to sit cross- legged before the frame and pulled
her medicine bag onto her lap. The elders had enjoined her to this
task and the responsibility weighed heavy upon her shoulders. In
preserving the white fawn skin, she hoped to undo some of the
damage her brother had wrought.
Her tools were arranged in a row on her right—a toothed
bone scraper for fleshing the hide, the fawn’s severed head with
its cranial cap removed and oily brains exposed, a smooth
bevel-ended hickory stick for working the brain solution into the
skin, a
palm-size pumice stone for a final scouring after the
skin’d dried, and embers she’d culled from her fire, glowing in a
small clay pot.
She placed the clay pot before the framed skin. From her medi-
cine bag she produced a small leather envelope fi lled with a hand-
ful of tobacco crumblings. She sprinkled a generous pinch onto the
embers and fanned the acrid smoke to billow up. Noolektokie
pushed the smoke with cupped palms, up to the eve ning sky.
“Spirit of the White Fawn—I call upon thee. Grant me the
skill to honor thy beauty.”
Laying her scraper at center, she leaned in and scraped a curl of
fat and flesh from the skin. Intent on her task, she did not hear old
Skootekitehi come upon her, and she startled when he spoke.
“Payakootha has approved. Your brother will join with your
man, Waythea, in a war party heading over the mountains to
raid on the Long Knives. They will travel the Warrior’s Path.”
“My brother seeks to possess what cannot be possessed.” Noolek-
tokie shrugged and shook her head. “What ever happens—even if
382 Christine
Blevins
he kills Ghizhibatoo and makes Mag-kie his woman—Panagashea
will not succeed.”
The old man nodded. “Waythea makes ready to leave. He
asked for you.”
“Please tell Waythea I will be along, Grandfather.”
Noolektokie drizzled a gourd of water over the skin to keep it
moist. Before leaving to bid farewell to her husband, she tossed
what was left of the tobacco onto the embers and closed her eyes.
The smoke fl oated up toward the heavens and she whispered one
more prayer.
H
Connor added a stick of deadfall to the growing pile in Figg’s
outstretched arms. He jerked his thumb and said, “Would ye
take a look at that preening peacock . . .”
Some twenty yards off, the viscount stood alongside the creek in
the small clearing where they’d set up camp for the night. He wore
a faux-military coat—a bright red wool affair trimmed with
offi cial- looking gold braid and regimental lace. Two silver- bound
pistols jutted from the blue satin sash belted at his waist. Since the
day they’d left Roundabout, he had taken to wearing an elaborate
small sword, a light but deadly thrusting weapon. With one booted
foot propped on a rock, he angled a mahogany-framed mirror to
the light of the setting sun, contemplating his refl ection.
Connor snickered and piled more wood onto Figg’s burden.
“All th’ glass-gazin’ in the world’ll never change the fact that he’s
a fuckin’ ugly bastard, fancy red coat or no.”
The viscount’s wounds had healed rudely. The
R
carved onto his
forehead festered angry red and oozed putrid matter around the
edges of the scab. Frayed stitches holding the raw edges of his nos-
tril together seemed to strain with swelling that would not abate.
Overall, he exhibited an unhealthy pallor, his eyes gone so yellow
with jaundice as to look like a pair of piss holes in the snow.
“Glass-gazin’,” Connor snorted. “Him with a face like a plate-
ful of mortal sin . . .”
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
383
Figg chortled, “Like it caught fire, and been put out with a
spade.”
Connor slapped his knee. “Good one, Figgy.”
The viscount set the mirror aside and called out, “Will you
two lackwits hurry along? There’s a plaguey chill in the air . . .”
“Aye, m’lord.” The little Irishman smiled, waved, and wan-
dered farther away. He found a nice long branch, braced a foot
to it, and cracked the length into sections small enough to carry.
“Hurry, the bastard says. D’ye think he might deign t’ lift a fi n-
ger and help us see to the camp?”
Figg shagged his massive head negative as his brother contin-
ued to rant.
“Not him. If work were a bed, yer lordship there would sleep
on the floor.” Connor struck a foppish pose with wrist limp, and
mimicked, “‘Gather four of the best men’—what a load o’ shite!
As if anyone’s fool enough to follow that utter arsehead into In-
dian territory.”
After a moment’s reflection, Figg noted, “We followed him—
you an’ me . . . an’ Crab . . . an’ there was them two slaves afore
they run off . . .”
“Brilliant, those two. They knew well enough to flee a sinking
ship.”
After only two nights in the wild, the Negroes they’d brought
along as porters disappeared with most of the meal, parched
corn, and dried meat. Worst of all, with the slaves gone, all the
hard work fell square upon Connor and Figg.
“Crab’s still aboard the sinkin’ ship wi’ us . . .” Figg offered
with some optimism.
“Crab’s a drunken sot. You and me—we’re fools.” Connor
shrugged his bony shoulders. “C’mon, let’s get a fire goin’ and
hope Crab brings in some meat for our supper.”
“Amen t’ meat, sez I.”
Cavendish’s vengeful expedition had been cursed from the on-
set. He had a hard time convincing any frontiersmen to venture
384 Christine
Blevins
into hostile territory in pursuit of Tom Roberts, who seemed to
be held in high esteem among the rough fellows. In the end, of-
fering a goodly amount of silver, Cavendish was able to coerce a
single drunken scoundrel to act as their scout.
“Awright . . .” Obediah Crabtree agreed, sealing the bargain
by hawking up a glob of tobacco-tinged mucus to splat in the
dirt. “I can take yiz as far as Peavey’s village on the Scioto, but
there’s where we part company. I hold no quarrel with Tom Rob-
erts, and I’ve lived this long avoidin’ Injuns wherever possible.”
True to his word, Crabtree led them through the wild wood-
lands cloaking the Blue Ridge, through the mountain pass into
the country called
Kenta-ke.
They traveled up toward the Scioto
River by way of an ancient trail known as the Warrior’s Path.
The viscount did not travel light. Two packhorses were re-
quired to haul his luxurious accoutrements. As his lordship could
not be expected to sleep without shelter, or on the ground, Con-
nor and Figg set up a canvas tent and a camp bed complete with
feather mattress and pillow every night. Conspicuous among the
furnishings and extensive wardrobe the viscount insisted on trav-
eling with were no fewer than two ten-gallon casks of French
brandy.
Figg dumped the wood next to the circle of stones they’d pre-
pared as a hearth for their fi re. Cavendish shed his weapons and
jacket, unfolded his canvas camp chair, and planted it next to the
fire ring. He authorized Figg to decant two bottles of brandy—
one for himself, and one for the men to share. Connor found his
tinderbox and set to kindling a fi re.
“Ho! The camp!” Obediah Crabtree shouted. Their guide
slipped out from a tangle of mountain laurel with a tom turkey
slung over his shoulder. Connor grinned. He had to concede—
Crab had yet to fail in providing for their supper.
A narrow,
loose- knit man, Crab shambled toward them
dressed in dirty, droopy buckskin from head to toe—shirt, clout,
and fringed leggings. His gaunt cheeks
were covered with a
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
385
patchy dark stubble. A wild ridge of bushy brows shadowed
deep-set eyes. Hatless, he had taken to wearing a sweat- and salt-
stained scrap of linsey tied gypsy style around his balding pate.
“Well done, Crabby!” Figg licked his lips. “Amen t’ turkey
bird, sez I.”
“Picked a bunch of custard apples.” Crab’s possibles pouch
bulged with yellow fruit.
“Make haste with supper, sir,” Cavendish ordered. “The stom-
ach worm gnaws.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n.” Crab rolled his eyes at Connor, and the two
of them exchanged an amused glance. The hunter set to work,
briskly plucking feathers. Connor kindled a
good-size blaze.
Crab had the bird eviscerated and roasting on a spit just as the
stars began to pop onto the sky.
Connor, Crab, and Figg sat on the ground in a semicircle on
one side of the fire, taking turns tending the meat, the fi re, and
their brandy. On the other side, perched in his chair, Cavendish
sat in sullen silence, sipping Armagnac straight from the bottle,
glaring at the fl ames.
“Ye keep a fine supply, Cap’n, an’ that’s of some import.”
Crab saluted the viscount and took a swig of brandy. “I’ll tell ye
boys, once, when I was out hunting buffeler with Ned Hatch,
we’d badly misjudged our supply and run through all our rum
premature like.”
“Misjudged!” Connor derided, snatching the bottle away from
him. “Drunken sot.”
“Hard work—butcherin’ wild beef.” Crab dug a fi nger under
the kerchief on his head for a scratch. “Yep, we were desperate
for drink, so we did like the Injuns do, and took t’ sucking the
water and sludge from the butchered buffeler guts.”
“If that isn’ the most disgustin’ . . .” Connor shuddered.
“’S truth. ’Tweren’t anywhere near as fine as this Frenchy
swill. Fermented grass mostly.” Crab plucked something from
behind his ear, examined it for a moment before flicking it into
386 Christine
Blevins
the fire. “It tasted kinda like ale what’d turned—but it served to
make us drunk, and that was all we cared for.” The skin on the
bird crisped golden, and when Crab pierced it with his knife, the
juices ran clear.
“Ho! The camp!” A shout resounded from the murky tangle
to the north.
Crab was the first to his feet. Gun in hand, he squinted, then
waved. “Ho! Macauley!”
Smiling, Hamish Macauley entered the circle of light cast by
the campfire. “Followed the smell of meat a-roastin’ and happily
spied th’ yellow of yer fi re.”
The Scotsman and Crab exchanged slaps on the back. The
viscount bounded to his feet, brandishing his bottle. “Recreant!
Judas!
How dare you exhibit your face in my presence . . .”
“Now, tha’s a fine way t’ greet the man what saved yer life
oncet.” Hamish slipped his gear from his shoulders.
The viscount blustered.
“Saved my life?!
’Twas
you
who ad-
mitted that madman into my demesne—
you
who allowed the
blackguard to escape, and
you
who ran off, leaving me sore
wounded and in desperate straits.”
“Och, quit yer bellyachin’.” The big Scotsman plunked him-
self down and settled comfortable betwixt Crab and Figg. “Con-
siderin’ the way ye blethered on t’ Tom aboot how ye bent his
woman o’er yer writin’ table t’ ravish, yer lucky t’ have gotten by
with those paltry cuts an’ bruises.” Hamish snapped a turkey leg
from the carcass. “Ye might recollect, Tom meant t’ kill ye. Had
his barrel t’ yer throat he did. Saved yer royal hide, I did, calming
his head and hand.”
Cavendish sighed, fell back into his chair, and took a deep
swallow from his bottle.
“The midwife is
Roberts’s woman
?” Connor sputtered.
“This . . .” He fluttered his hands through the air. “This is all on
account of that Scots whore?”
“Yer lordship’s manly boasts put Tom over the edge.” Hamish
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
387
tore a bite from the drumstick. Bits of meat and spittle fl ew from