The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (27 page)

The dusty smell of corn chaff lingered in Tamsen’s nose as she trudged the path behind Jesse. Long, papery leaves waved brown in memory’s breeze. Husk-covered ears thudded into the wagon bed, punctuated by the laughter of little boys. The pair had tried repeatedly to climb Jesse like a tree until he’d given in to their mischief and, growling, entered into a bout of roughhousing that flattened a row of corn before ending in shrieks on the ground.

“Whenever he’s by,” Tate had told her, “they stick to him like stink on a skunk.”

She’d laughed at the expression, hiding what the sight of Jesse at play
with the boys had done to her, tugging at her heart without due warning. Laughter hadn’t banished the worry she’d carried around all day. That worry weighed on her now, dulling her eyes to the forest around her as they climbed the ridge. For the first time since he and Jesse raised their cabin on Allard land, Cade hadn’t come to help with the harvest. And Tamsen was sure it was her fault.

The morning after Jesse shared the story of Cade’s adoption by the Shawnees, rounding the cabin on her way to the necessary, she’d run smack into Cade coming the other way. He’d reached to steady her, as he had on the street in Morganton.

“Oh!” she’d said. “I’m sorry. Where … where’s Jesse?”

“At the stable. I need to ask you a thing or two.”

She’d blinked at Cade, before grasping the sudden shift of his words. “Ask me what?”

“That suitor of yours. What sort of man was he that you didn’t take to him?”

“Mr. Kincaid? I … He … We only met the once.”

“And?”

“I thought at first I might like him,” she blurted. “Aside from his owning so many slaves and knowing that would be the life I’d have to lead if I married him.” Words had come tumbling then. She couldn’t seem to stop them, not with Cade’s eyes fixed on her from under those fierce brows, as if he was looking for a reason to doubt her. “But then I thought, maybe he’d be a kind master. Kinder than Mr. Parrish. Maybe I could bear it. Then his own slave came in.”

She couldn’t look away from those steady eyes. She sensed disapproval. Resentment. Or thought so. Did Cade wish she’d never involved Jesse in her troubles? Never come between them like a wedge? That was what she’d begun to feel like.

Quickly she’d told him the rest, of Toby, and the slap, and Ambrose’s unconcern for the slave who’d been raped.

“What was he doing in Morganton?”

She hadn’t thought on the details of that conversation since she’d stormed out of the ordinary. “It was something about land. On the Yadkin River, I think. Really all he wanted to talk about was Long Meadows, his grandfather’s plantation.”

Cade studied her, making her feel like she was holding something back. “You’re certain he’ll not give up the hunt for you?”

“I’m no wise certain about anything, though I’ve every reason to think Mr. Parrish means to find me.”

Cade had started to say something to that, but merely grunted as if in agreement and stepped around her.

Before Tamsen woke the following day, he had left them, taking more than a day’s worth of gear and provision.

“Off hunting, more’n like,” Jesse told her when she found him out back of the cabin, chopping wood and looking as troubled by the desertion as she felt.

Deep in her thoughts about Cade, moments passed before Tamsen realized they were climbing through unfamiliar woods. Jesse had taken a side trail while her eyes were trained on the back of his shirt, the damp spot where the straps of his rifle and bag crossed.

“Where … are we … bound?” she asked, out of breath.

Jesse paused, standing a little above her on the trail. Beyond him the path twisted up through rock-studded forest. “Thought I’d show you a spot up-creek. ’Less you’d rather go home directly?”

The day was cooling toward evening, but she was heated from the climb. Sweat trickled from beneath her cap where her hair lay coiled and heavy. Jesse looked every bit as hot, and filthy from their work.

“What about supper? Aren’t you hungry?”

“As a bear,” he said. “But reckon you’d like me to wash first. Anyway, we’re nigh there.”

Nigh
was a relative term, she decided, some while before a faint rushing
she’d taken for a breeze in the hardwoods grew louder. It couldn’t be a wind, for the trees barely shivered. Then they rounded a bend in the trail, and there beyond was the creek, spilling over massive, moss-flecked stones in a little fall. It dropped in a glistening sheet and rippled out to the edges of a wide basin. Sunlight speared the surrounding trees, striking the pool’s surface in stripes of translucent green and shadow.

When Tamsen would have stepped past Jesse for a better look, he put out a hand. Sliding the rifle off his shoulder, he went forward a step, looked upstream, down, scanned the clump of rusty serviceberry on the far side, the dark laurel thicket above the fall, then turned. “The falls mask noises. ’S all right, though.”

The path descended to a rock that rose out of the pool, long and flat. Tamsen stood at its edge, faint mist off the fall cooling her face. Birds flitted among the brush surrounding the basin. Along the low bough of a sycamore, a squirrel ran out, scolding. She barely heard it. Nor did she hear Jesse, behind her, stripping to his breechclout. The first she knew of it was the splash of his dive into the pool. She saw the shape of him moving beneath the water before his head broke the surface in a patch of sunlight, sleek as an otter’s.

He grinned up at her, treading water. “Coming in?”

“Me?” He moved closer, propelling himself toward the rock, only his head above the water’s surface. His arms were long. Maybe long enough to reach her ankle. She stepped back.

“It’s nice. Cold, but you get used to it.” His lips were turning purple.

“I don’t swim, remember?”

“I’m not likely to forget. But I can teach you. It’s not hard.”

She shook her head.

“Suit yourself.” Still grinning, he sank under the rippling surface.

She watched him stroke around the pool, knowing he had to be freezing. Finally he swam back to her. He put a hand over the stone’s lip and clung on.

She’d been right about his reach.

She knelt, tucking her petticoat close, so as not to have to shout. “Is this where you and Cade come to bathe?”

“It is. You want to come too?” He ran a hand down his face, sluicing away water, then dipped his head so his hair slicked back over his scalp. She found herself fascinated by the fine shape of his skull, usually hidden under that thatch of hair he wore tailed back. Her heart was going at a trot.

“I’m happy hauling water to the cabin. That way I can heat it.”

Jesse gripped the ledge with both hands and vaulted onto the rock, streaming water all around. The breechclout covered him front and back. Not a bit at the sides. His long, lean belly and even longer legs were slick and bare, his shoulders and chest stippled with cold.

Fearfully and wonderfully made, he was.

Cheeks blazing at the thought—and sight—she tore her eyes away and looked at the pool, the trees, the sky. Shock, mortification, admiration were threads in a hopeless tangle around her pounding heart. She was tempted to plunge into the pool after all—clothed, of course—just to cool her face and calm her rioting thoughts.

Apparently untroubled sitting there nearly naked, Jesse shook his hair like a dog would shake, giving her an excuse to scramble to her feet and put her back to him. After a moment she heard him dressing.

“You worked hard today. Tate told me he was pleased to have you helping. I’m sorry ’bout your hands.”

Tamsen swallowed but had no words—only the image of golden skin and lean muscle seared across her mind. His gaze was hot on the back of her head. She felt a trickle of sweat run down her nape.

“You don’t have to wear a cap all the time,” he said, as if he’d seen. “Janet’s given up on making Beth wear one.”

Tamsen faced him. Shirt and leggings covered most of that disconcerting skin now. “You don’t want me to wear a cap?”

“Wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t.”

“But my hair …” Twice as thick as Bethany’s, her hair could curl past taming when the weather turned humid. “It’d be a bramble thicket if I don’t at least keep it plaited.”

Her hands were trembling. She clenched them, wincing at the sting of blisters as Jesse squeezed the water from his own hair. Gaze locked with hers, he stepped closer. “I didn’t mean to fret you none. Wear your hair any way pleases you. That’s all I meant to say.”

Tamsen looked away. It wasn’t only Bethany, or her hair—or sight of his impressively knitted frame—that had her knotted up inside. “Jesse … I know Cade left because of me. You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”

Vines grew thick among the trees below the pool, draped scarlet among greenery nipped with brown and gold. Insects danced in the sunlight shafting through the trees. She couldn’t look at any of it now, only at Jesse and the pain seeping into his gaze.

“Cade keeps a lot to himself. Always has done. He’ll come back. And come ’round to accepting the way things are now.”

“He shouldn’t have to. I wish …”

“Don’t say you wish I’d never helped you,” he said, a look in his eyes now she couldn’t read. “Don’t say that.”

“Then I wish it hadn’t cost you so much. I wish you didn’t have to lie to your neighbors, or that Cade felt driven out of his home, or that he’s upset you can’t go hunting this—”

“You weren’t meant to hear that.” Jesse closed the space between them, then touched her face. She froze, though his hand had already warmed, and for an instant she almost let herself press against it.

She stepped back. “I did hear it.”

Jesse held her in his gaze. “You let me worry about Cade. Ain’t nothing happened between him and me to cause any lasting upset. It’s only … We’ve all reached a spot where we got choices to make, soon as the dust settles. It’ll be all right.”

He was trying to reassure her, drawing from a well of comfort she
hoped wasn’t as shallow as her own. Tamsen forced a smile. His in return was so relieved and full that it did something alarming to the pit of her stomach. Alarming, but nice.

Then he went and shattered the moment.

“There’s another thing we need to talk about.” He bent to pull on his moccasins. The hem of his shirt had darkened, wicking up water off his breechclout. “Back when Cade and me were bringing the beeves to market, before Morganton, we got ourselves invited to a wedding. Friends of ours. Cherokees.”

She was fairly certain she concealed the jolt that went through her. She remembered now, that first day she milked the cow, his saying that the Cherokees knew him and Cade. She hadn’t translated that into
friendship
, though. “Do they ever come here, your Cherokee friends?”

“Not often. Ain’t safe. It ain’t always safe for us to go to them. There’s miles of hazards between. But we promised to be there, Cade and me—for White Shell’s wedding—not knowing things would change.”

Her presence had complicated everything for them.

“You should go,” she said, then before she lost her nerve, “I’ll go with you, if that’s what you mean to ask.”

“Not exactly.” He shot her a half-worried look as he reached for his bullet-bag. “It’s at Chota—the principal Overhill town. A few days’ riding for me and Cade, if we don’t run into trouble on the way.”

Hostile Indians, she supposed he meant. Dragging Canoe’s braves, the Chickamaugas. Or were they Creeks? Not that she’d be able to tell the difference if either knocked at their cabin door.

She studied his face in profile, trying to guess what he wanted her to say, finally deciding he didn’t want to take her to Chota. She’d slow them down, or maybe be seen along the way, recognized, bring down worse trouble than Indians on them all.

“When will you go?” she asked, as a sliver of unease pierced her.

“Once the corn’s in. Or Cade comes back.” He stood and slung his
rifle across his shoulder, searching her face. “I don’t have to go. Cade can make my excuses to White Shell and—”

“I want you to go. I’ll be fine on my own.”

She’d managed to shock him. “I don’t aim to leave you alone. You’ll stay with Tate and Janet till we come back. They know who’s looking for you, and I trust Tate to keep you safe.”

The sliver of unease worked deeper.

“That’s settled, then,” she said with as firm a nod as she could muster. “I’m ready for supper. How about you?”

Without waiting on his reply, she started back the way they’d come. His hand on her arm halted her. He nodded toward another path descending along the creek. “Cabin’s that way.”

Chin high, Tamsen started down the right path with a stride she hoped looked fearless.

Shoulders aching, Tamsen shifted the lid aside and tilted the churn toward the firelight to check her progress. Instead of lumps of gathered butter, a disheartening puffy mess floated in the milk.

The churn was an old one, stored in the Allards’ barn until the family’s cornhusking a week past, which Tamsen and Jesse and neighbors from down along Stony Creek attended. Janet had wiped the churn clean of cobwebs and presented it to Tamsen who, after watching Bethany dash gallons of milk into butter, thought it a task she could accomplish without strict supervision.