Scalpdancers (26 page)

“Never can tell what you might learn,” Morgan said with a grin.

“Oh, God,” Emerson muttered, thinking of the possibilities.

“I've been to islands where the holy man is expected to bed every lass who comes of age. It's quite an initiation.”

Emerson bravely kept his smile plastered on his face. His expression briefly wavered when he heard the tribal drums begin their cadence in the village upriver. He clutched his dog-eared Bible and took courage. He hurried across the clearing.

“Be fruitful and multiply!” Morgan called after him. Emerson winced as if struck between the shoulders, but he made no reply.

Faith McCorkle put her curtains aside, and needle and thread quickly followed. She took up the curtain Julia had been working on—and hadn't touched a stitch to since Morgan entered the clearing. Julia, in a simple deerskin dress, a gift from one of Chief Comcomly's wives in return for a small hand mirror, stood by the cabin door, just enough in the shadows of the front room to remain out of sight.

“Daughter, this isn't Philadelphia,” Faith chided gently. “Proper rules of courtship have no place here. Listen to the drums. They'll tell you what to do.”

“Courtship?” Julia feigned surprise, watching her father depart in the company of the Clayoquat chief. She heard the distant drums but did not understand their meaning. Not yet. She peeked sideways at Faith, who maintained such an incredulous expression that Julia had to laugh. “Am I so obvious?”

“Only to a person with eyes,” Faith declared merrily. Julia's cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “You've much to learn of needle and thread. Speed for one thing. I'll have all the curtains sewn in the time it takes you to gather a basket of wildflowers for the table.”

“I hate to leave you alone,” Julia said.

Faith had presented an opportunity the missionary's daughter couldn't refuse. She could not express her gratitude. Morgan had already disappeared behind the church. But Julia had heard him mention a spring and knew precisely where he'd be. Then forlornly Julia thought of how poorly she must look, dressed like a red Indian, and she considered a more appropriate dress. But her trunk held a few dresses and skirts in grays and blacks and some rough-woven blouses. These past months she had worn her buckskin dress and ankle-high moccasins, finding such attire more appropriate for work. She stood in the doorway of her room and stared at the unopened trunk at the foot of her hand-hewn bed. Perhaps a ribbon to tie back her hair?

“It's a man you'll be seeing. Not some cavalier,” Faith said. “I've seen you both working together; I've seen the way Mister Morgan watches you. I'm wishing my own sweet husband would look at me like that. Just once like he used to.” Faith made a kind of clucking sound as her mind became filled with youthful fantasies. She crossed the room and touched Julia's shoulders and turned her around.

“You'll find nothing in that trunk that will do for the likes of Penmerry more than the natural gifts God gave you,” Faith McCorkle said, her hands on her solid hips. She wore a work shirt and breeches, both of which belonged to her husband. An elaborate necklace of shells and brightly colored glass beads and a tuft or two of seabird plumage was her only claim to vanity this day. Faith stepped back and gave the younger woman an honest appraisal.

The buckskin dress did little to hide her figure and Julia's trim well-shaped calves were certainly pleasing to the eye. No doubt Morgan had already noticed, having worked alongside Emerson's daughter lo these many weeks. He must have watched and wanted to run his hands through her thick auburn hair or kiss her wine-red lips. It was a hard world with precious few moments for a man and a woman to find love. Faith McCorkle wasn't about to stand in the way of Julia and Morgan. Let them find each other and let tomorrow bring what it may.

“Go, child—and if your father should ask …” She walked to a window and fumbled with the curtains. “I'll just say I was tending to the curtains and when I turned around …” Faith peered over her shoulder. She was alone. She heard footsteps outside the cabin.

When Sergeant William Chadwell came to the Sea Spray Inn, he came alone to prove he feared not one man among the trappers who worked the coast. He arrived just as Trey Frugé, a French Canadian, was displaying his skill with a tomahawk, much to Reap McCorkle's displeasure. Frugé and Temp Rawlins were arguing the merits of a hand ax versus a stout cutlass.

Frugé hurled his tomahawk across the room and buried the blade in one of the wooden ceremonial masks hung near the door just as Chadwell made his entrance. The British marine leaped aside as splinters showered his red tunic. He grabbed for his pistol, tripped over a stool, and landed on his ample rump, much to the amusement of the half-dozen men gathered at the bar. Reap McCorkle had hoped if he could get enough men filled with whiskey courage, he might be able to lead them in storming the stockade and recapturing the fort.

To his dismay most of the trappers had left for the high country and those who remained were far more interested in draining the last of his whiskey. Fruge and another trapper, a hard-bitten trader named Nick Roemer, had just brought in a load of prime pelts for Reap to store until the Hudson Bay Company representative arrived from the Vancouver settlement to the north. Neither of these new arrivals were interested in the fight to preserve Astoria. As for the others, men who Reap considered friends, only Temp Rawlins was game. The seaman would have been willing to storm perdition itself, anything to escape building churches. So Chadwell's mishap lightened an otherwise dour mood. It wasn't until they recognized Chadwell's pockmarked features rising past the edge of the table that the laughter died. Temp and the others had glimpsed the uniform, not the man. Only a fool would knowingly mock the mean-tempered sergeant now that he was in command of the fort.

Chadwell looked around, spied the tomahawk, and wrenched it from the remains of the mask. Fruge gulped. He turned toward the bar and reached for the whiskey. Reap slid the bottle out of the man's reach and placed a jug of his home brew in Frugé's grasp. As the French Canadian wasn't about to take part in a rebellion, Reap saw no point in plying the man with the last of his whiskey stock.

Frugé loosed an audible sigh.
“Sacre bleu
, but you are a cruel man, monsieur innkeeper,” he said in a wounded tone. He motioned for his partner to join him at a nearby table. Reap shrugged and started to remove the home brew. Frugé caught his arm and confiscated the clay jug.

“It will do,
mon ami
, though you've spoiled my taste for it,” Frugé remarked. But the French Canadian could be philosophical. The American Fur Company always sent a supply ship in August. He'd bide his time and steal a barrel of spirits for himself right off the boat if need be.

Chadwell sauntered the length of the tavern, enjoying the attention he received as the several men who had gathered for a morning of strong drink and tall tales turned guardedly silent. The men warily waited for the sergeant to announce his intentions.

Chadwell paused at Fruge's table and placed the tomahawk in front of him.

“You lost this, mate.”

Frugé steeled himself, waiting for the explosion. Chadwell's temper was widely known. To his surprise the British marine let the matter drop. Beneath the table Fruge's thumb gently lowered the hammer of the pistol he had kept aimed at Chadwell's groin.

The marine crossed to the bar and stood face to face with Reap McCorkle.

“Twas a sad day when we buried poor lef tenent Briarwood who died of the fever. A sad day for you, McCorkle. 'Cause that meant Captain Black would have to leave me in charge.” The sergeant grinned like a big ugly alley cat standing over a broken-winged robin. His eyes narrowed into tiny black beads; a grin split his features, crinkling his already scarred flesh. He slowly reached out and hefted the whiskey bottle on the countertop and tilted it to his lips.

Reap held himself in check. The innkeeper's celebration had been premature. With Chadwell in charge things had gone from bad to worse. The sergeant placed the bottle on the counter and slapped the bar top.

“Bless my soul, now there's a drink fit for lords and admirals,” Chadwell remarked, smacking his lips as the whiskey coursed down his gullet. He cocked his head and scrutinized Temp standing a few feet away. “The sea hound is here. But where's the pup?” Chadwell glanced around the tavern and shoved his black cap back off his forehead. “Well, no matter. Our paths are bound to cross before Captain Black returns.” He looked back at Reap McCorkle. “I'll see the hides you've stored, innkeeper.”

Reap's eyes widened. Black had promised to allow Reap a profit on the sale of the furs. It wouldn't be his usual commission, still, better than nothing. Reap kept them stored in a cellar below the tavern. Chadwell went behind the bar, knelt, and curled his fingers through an iron ring on the floor. He straightened and the trapdoor groaned open. Chadwell lit a lantern and held it before him and ducked partway through the portal. The light of the lantern played on the sleek pelts—otter, fox, beaver, and wolf—silky, soft, shining in the amber glow while shadows danced upon the wall like animal spirits of the dead.

The sergeant whistled through his teeth. “I heard you stored 'em below. Someone could wind up a wealthy man with all them pelts.” His close-set eyes peered above the lip of the trapdoor. “I wonder who.”

The conifer forest muffled the sound of the Clayoquat drums. Where the icy spring bubbled out of the ground to form a shallow pool, the distant drums could be felt more than heard, and became the very pulse of this evergreen world waiting in the August warmth.

Slanted sunlight bleeding through the vaulted ceiling of the firs only added to the magic, linked heaven and earth.

Through this cathedral of silence and magic a shadow man moved with all the stealth of a hunter. Thirst had overruled his own common sense. It was too dangerous. But the shadow man had to trust his senses. Were not his eyes sharp as a hawk's? He could see no one was about. He had ears, did he not, that could alert him to the approach of a stranger?

The shadow man detached himself from the safety of the emerald gloom and entered the light. He hurried to the pool's edge and knelt on the moist soft earth amid the tracks of elk and white-tailed deer, otter, squirrel, red fox, and badger. Water was the source of life for them all.

He saw himself reflected upon the water and he hesitated, staring into the face on the pool's rippling surface, and words formed in his mind. He spoke them, softly:

“I am the watcher in the woods.

I am the hunter in the dark.

I am Lone Walker.”

15

Morgan Penmerry didn't notice the moccasin prints near the spring. His mind and heart, and so his eyes, were elsewhere, ranging the trail that wound off past clusters of calico flowers thriving on the transitory light of midday. His ax, sheathed cutlass, and brace of pistols lay a few feet away, where he had dropped them, unbuckling his belt and spreading a blanket wide enough for two.

It was no accident that brought Morgan to the mission just as Emerson was preparing to depart. Julia had told him the day before of Chief Comcomly's invitation.

Morgan knelt by the spring and cupped the chilled water to his face and doused his head. He emerged with his hair streaming water. He circled the spring to burn off his nervous energy and was amused at his own antics. Merciful heaven, was this Morgan Penmerry, the dashing China trader, a man who'd sailed around the Horn, brought to such a terrible state, to prowl and pace like a milk-faced lad at the notion of a young woman's arrival?

He looked up and saw her standing near the blanket. Sunlight played upon her unbound auburn hair. He skirted the shallow spring, disturbing a swarm of hovering bees near the water's edge, and stood before the missionary's daughter. She reached up to touch his clean-shaven face.

“I like that,” she said, looking up with liquid green eyes. She brought a hand to her mouth, a demure gesture to cover a teasing smile. “You looked almost frightened to see me, Master Penmerry.”

“Maybe I thought you were a bear,” Morgan said. “Anyway, it's you who ought to be frightened, lass. There you be, comely as a siren and alone in the forest with the likes of myself.”

Julia turned with a flip of her auburn locks. “I'm not worried. After all, I have accorded you the trust that comes with friendship. And I can trust you, Morgan. You proved that in Macao!” She sat on the blanket and tucked her legs beneath her. Julia smiled remembering the tryst that never quite happened and how she had passed the night in a drunken and very innocent stupor.

“Oh,” he said, somewhat dismayed by her reply. She would have to bring up “friendship” and “trust.”

He knelt beside her and lost himself in those green eyes. For one brief moment he experienced a peculiar sensation, an almost unbearable sadness, and the sadness filled him and brought him almost to the brink of tears before it changed to a fire that consumed him, burning away the pain and the strange sadness. Obeying the flames, he pulled her to him. He would not burn alone but must let the fires engulf them both. The sadness turned to urgency, and wordlessly Julia clung to him, sharing his need. The beat of their hearts became one.

Clothes were swept aside as flesh yearned to explore and touch and taste. Their passion was playful, wanton, freely given, freely shared.

They kissed—mouths hungry for each other—and kissed again. With the beat of passion and the trust of reborn innocence they nurtured each other, brought each other to almost painful yet sweet fulfillment. Love was the journey and they were willing wayfarers down a road neither had ever traveled before.

Passion was a song of light and life to rage in the face of night. Ecstasy was a tide that bore them away. Julia's hands clawed at Morgan's back as his warmth filled her. He groaned and repeated her name like a litany as their bodies were joined like hands in prayer.