The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (47 page)

“Keep your worthless Franklin paper,” Jesse heard him grumble seconds later. “Just git!”

Saddle leather creaked. Hooves crunched the snow. Jesse heard the farmer’s boots clomp onto his porch, where he paused to offer a parting shot. “If Tipton’s got a lick o’ sense, he’ll pick off ever’ last one of ye from the comfort of his upstairs winders!”

The cabin door opened, loosing the chorus of baby, dog, and bawling cow. Then it shut with a
bang
, and the inside bar slammed down.

Jesse waited till he could no longer hear the riders, then returned to Tamsen, feeling like a rabbit diving head first into its hole. Not that the shed was much refuge. She was his refuge, he realized as he flung an arm over her for their mutual warmth, comforted by the sound of her breathing while his mind sorted through what he’d overheard.

Sevier had Tipton’s house surrounded. Something about stolen property … or was it taxes? He supposed it depended on which side of the great divide of Franklin one stood.

Slaves
. He remembered Cade telling them that slaves had been taken from Sevier—Tipton forcibly levying a North Carolina tax. So, Sevier hadn’t let such an affront go unanswered. No surprise there.

Other things his pa had said came back to him in snatches. Things about Ambrose Kincaid. The way his pa had talked, it seemed he knew the man, knew what he’d do if he caught them. But how could that be?

Jesse dozed, once hearing riders pass again. Franklinites patrolling the roads to Tipton’s farm? Or a more personal threat? He wished he knew how far it was to Tipton’s.

Hounded by enemies. Hemmed by fractious neighbors. Somehow, between them, he had to get his wife north to the Holston, in hopes Cade was still alive to meet them.

The slamming of the cabin door had him springing out of the hay, jerked from sleep, thoughts spinning with memories of Franklin militia and barking dogs and men determined to take his wife and see him hanged for murder.

Tamsen sat up, face pale and creased in the gray of dawn.

“Jesse?” She gave a startled yelp as he pulled her to her feet, no more than half-awake.

“We have to go.” He snatched up the bearskin, flung it over the horse, then cupped his hands to help her mount. He checked the priming of his rifle, then slung it over his shoulder. Cutting short the horse’s feeding on the hay Tamsen had vacated, he led it from the shed. Tamsen ducked to clear the doorway as the farmer came striding around the shed to his woodpile, carrying rifle and ax.

The man halted, gaping. “Who in tarnation—?”

Jesse was running before the man could collect himself. When they’d cleared the woodpile, he thrust the reins at Tamsen and vaulted onto the horse behind her, grabbing his rifle to keep it from slinging off his shoulder.

“Where do I go?” Tamsen’s hood fell back, and her hair, loosed from its braid, streamed in his face.

“Take to the wood.” Jesse held to her with his hands and the horse with his knees, frantic to keep them both astride.

A shot cracked. The ball struck a tree beyond them, shattering bark across the snow. Before the farmer could reload, they’d put too many trees between them to make a target. Jesse had her slow the horse, fearing a
tumble now more than a shot in the back. He looked ahead through the lifting gray, scouting the snowy wood.

“See that fallen oak? It’s pointing north. That’s the way we got to go.” And fast, he thought, as the snowfall thickened around them again.

It took every scrap of concentration Tamsen possessed to pick a path through the maze of trees and stumps and outcrop stones obscured by the slanting snow. Cold stung her eyes, blurring her vision further. At first the sound, a distant crackling, barely registered. It was Jesse, behind her, who drew attention to the noise. “Gunfire. Tamsen—hold up.”

She hauled back on the reins. Jesse slipped off the horse and took its bridle in hand. He walked them forward along the edge of a draw, scanning the trees enclosing them, pausing every few paces to listen. Tamsen’s heart bumped against her ribs, trapped and panicked. “What is it? Who is shooting?”

Jesse didn’t answer. He led the horse on, making for a sheltered spot ahead where a pine on the lip of the draw had fallen against a neighboring tree. Its roots hadn’t pulled completely free of soil; the tree lived, creating a green, thick-needled wall. Jesse led them behind it. He reached for her then, touching her hand, squeezing her moccasined foot. She thought he meant to help her down, but he cautioned her to stay in the saddle.

“Militia stopped at that farm overnight, a party out requisitioning for Sevier.” He tugged the dangling bearskin free and rolled it tight, tying it with whangs from his knapsack. She reached for the rug to sling around herself so he’d be less encumbered.

“Sevier—Franklin’s governor?”

“Aye. Just now he’s got John Tipton’s house surrounded, with Tipton holed up inside.” Jesse paused at another ragged volley of gunfire, far
enough away to echo through the hills, near enough to make her flinch. “Maybe they’ve broke out. Or in.”

It took her a moment to put the name of Tipton into proper context; Colonel Tipton, leader of the Old State faction, the man they’d seen in the Jonesborough courthouse, back in September. She shivered, certain the world had gone mad again with war, with every man at odds with his neighbor, red or white. “How close is Tipton’s house?”

“Too close by the sound of things.” Jesse’s face was grim in the half light, wet from snow. “Whatever’s afoot, I’ve got to skirt us around it, get us headed north. With attention fixed down this way, maybe we can slip past Jonesborough and …”

Jesse’s head lifted. Tamsen heard it too. Another horse, maybe more than one, coming behind them, snorting in the cold. And it wasn’t snowing hard enough to have covered their trail. She met his gaze. “The farmer?”

“He didn’t have a horse. Scoot back.” Jesse handed up the rifle, then mounted in front of her. Before the horse could take a step, an explosion of noise rent the air.

Jesse jerked against her.

Tamsen nearly dropped the rifle but clung to it one-handed while the horse churned snow and pine needles and snorted clouds of breath. While Jesse fought to restrain it, she craned around his shoulder, looking for blood. And found it—soaking his thigh, bright against his legging.

A voice shouted from beyond the leaning pine, sending waves of shock along her spine—a voice she’d last heard in a cabin near Sycamore Shoals. Dominic Trimble.

“Jesse Bird! You hit?”

Terror skittered down her limbs. “Jesse, you are. You’re bleeding.”

His voice was tight. “A graze. Give me the rifle.”

She handed him the weapon.

“I reckon you winged him,” a second voice called—Seth’s, sounding
well recovered from his own winging at her hands. “He ain’t took flight again!”

Jesse cocked the rifle, aiming it back along the draw. Snow obscured any movement, else the pair was hunkered behind cover.

“Where’s Kincaid?” Jesse shouted. Tamsen could detect no hint of pain in his voice now but knew he only masked it.

“With us,” Dominic hollered. “He’s come for the woman you done stole out from under his nose twice now.”

“If he’s there, let him speak!” Jesse edged the horse forward a step, peering through the snow-laden boughs, trying to pinpoint their location through the shifting curtain of white. “You’re lying. He wouldn’t shoot so near to Tamsen.”

Silence.

Finally Seth called out, “That was a warning shot. We ain’t going to hurt the girl, just give her over to Kincaid. He’s over with Sevier’s militia, waiting on us to flush you out.”

“Militia that’s swarming these woods,” Dominic added. “They’re busy with Tipton, but they know to be looking for you. Ain’t no getting through ’em.”

“There’s no getting through
me
for you,” Jesse called back. Tamsen could feel him shaking, though he was rigid with the effort to control it. “I won’t let ’em take you,” he said, gaze fixed down the barrel of his rifle.

“Look, Jesse.” Seth’s voice cut through the blinding snow. “You’re a wanted man in most every county west of the mountains, but turn her over and we’ll let ye go. You can take your chances with the militia.”

Tamsen felt the growl rise up from Jesse’s chest. “You’ll take her over my dead body!”

She saw the flash in the pan as Jesse fired, felt the rifle’s kick through his shoulder as they were enveloped in the throat-stinging reek of burnt powder.

There came a second blast, sounding farther away. At first Tamsen
thought Jesse’s shot had echoed back from some nearby bluff, then realized a second weapon had fired hard on its heels.

Jesse passed the spent rifle back to her, and the horse surged from cover. Clinging to Jesse, she struggled to prevent the heavy thing being snatched away by reaching brush. She risked a glance behind but could see no pursuit through the snow. Hanks of icy hair straggled across her face as her thoughts spun—half-formed, fragmented things. How could the Trimbles have found them? Had they been tracking them all the way from Thunder-Going’s town? Did it mean Cade and Bears were dead? Would this running and hiding never end? Would the snow never end? If anything, it was thickening, on the verge of becoming a violent blow.

Jesse slowed the horse to a trot. He’d found a path, which quickly broadened to a wagon track, but it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. He reached back for the rifle, then dug in his bag for the means to reload it.

Blood was spreading, darkening the buckskin covering his thigh.

“Jesse, your leg. That’s no graze.”

The crack of gunfire sounded again, a broken series of shots, rolling through the hills in echo. Jesse drew the horse up, turning a circle, scanning the forested slopes. The shouts of men—many men—mingled with the firing, indistinct in the falling snow. “God Almighty … where?”

The shooting, the disembodied shouting, seemed to be all around them.

From out of the confusion came the thud of a rider coming fast on the track behind. Jesse urged their horse on again, its hooves slipping in the snow, digging for purchase.

“Peshewa!”

Tamsen nearly lost her seat as Jesse wrenched them to a halt. She saw the rider emerging from the snow, tall in the saddle, black hat pierced with a hawk’s feather.

“Pa!” Jesse reached for his father as he drew in his horse. The two clasped arms, beset by relief. “Bears?”

“Alive when I left him. I’ve been on your trail since I got him back to his people.” Cade saw the blood staining Jesse’s leg and blanched. “Bad?”

“Won’t credit my chances on foot. Long as I stay on this horse, I’ll do. Was it you shooting back there?”

“I pinned ’em so you could slip free, but they’ll be coming.”

Tamsen’s stomach lurched, the relief of Cade’s presence fading. The intermittent shots, the cries, the shouts hadn’t ceased. It was maddening, hearing but not seeing, fearing the impact of a stray ball at any moment. Or one not so stray.

Cade turned his horse into the trees. Jesse followed behind but soon as he could urged his horse in close.

“You know about Tipton?” Cade said.

“We do. Tamsen—duck!” They bent in time to avoid being swept off the horse by a low bough, but the stock of Jesse’s rifle banged her nose. She hardly felt the impact for the numbing cold, but when she wiped a hand beneath her nose, it came away bloody.

“I’ve been all over these hills looking for you,” Cade said. “Ran across Carolina militia coming down from our way. Tipton got word through the Franklin lines. Sounds like an all-out battle now.”

How were they to keep clear of it? The question flashed through Tamsen’s mind, but the thought was driven out as shouts rose behind them. These voices she recognized. Seth and Dominic had found where they left the track. She squeezed Jesse’s ribs in her fright. “They’re right on us!”

“Battle or no, we got to shake those two.” Cade plunged his horse down an incline to the bed of a narrow creek, even as a musket ball whiffled through the limbs above their heads. “Pray we find a way through this hell.”