Wind Dancer

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Author's Note

This book is dedicated to my mother, Donna. How can I tell you what you have been to me and this family? I only know this—I would have never known Hope and her characterization without watching you live out your love for your family and for Him. I imagine getting to heaven and seeing you with all your crowns on your head. (Crowns that you have thrown at the feet of Jesus, He convincing you that they belong on your head in all their towering beauty).
Beauty
. That's it. That is what you are and will forever be.

To David Webb, who helped make this story all that it is. I appreciate you as both an editor and a friend.

To Leo Finnerty, a park ranger at George Rogers Clark National Historical Park. Thank you for checking my work, believing in it, and praying for it. You said I gave “new life” to Clark's story. You helped in that. I am thankful God put you in my life.

And lastly to the citizens of Vincennes, Indiana. I hope you are as proud as I am to have walked the same soil as someone like George Rogers Clark. I hope we all can be so full of faith in our mission on this earth. You are a grand old city … one that I am proud to have called home.

He heard it again. Coming upstream and upwind, deep in the dark shroud of forest trees, the unmistakable crunch of autumn leaves. Samuel Holt crouched low over the tiny fire-pit of birch bark, hoarding the last wisp of warmth before the inevitable flight about to be demanded of him. He had discovered this means of keeping warm while giving the locals few clues to his presence. Now, after many a night's practice, he could sleep while squatting over a hole that gave off little smoke but enough warmth to keep a man through the cold, dark hours of night. His deerskin jacket hung tent-like from broad shoulders, trapping the heat. His position was small and blended into his surroundings, but his body held the easy suppleness of finely tuned muscle that could explode with power at a moment's notice. He knew with a fair amount of humble acknowledgment that he could spring up on legs that would carry him for miles at a run if need be; and judging from the tingling in his scalp, this might be one of those occasions.

Allowing himself some small movement of his head, he looked to the predawn sky, still and pregnant with the possibilities of any new day. He felt the last tendrils of sleep fall away and sucked the cold, damp air into his lungs to enliven him. In a matter of seconds, he had gone from sound sleep to full alert, every sense straining for advantage and, with it, survival.

His gaze scanned the tree line for movement. Mentally, he took quick accounting of his accoutrements. He could feel the steady weight of his knife sheathed at his thigh, a weight to which he was so accustomed that he had to think of it to realize it was there. His tomahawk hung from his belt, hidden by the fringed jacket hard won in a game of hazard and comfortingly close to his belly. His long rifle, loaded and inches from his right hand, lay on the forest floor, hidden among the brown curl of the leaves.

The buck he had killed at dusk the night before was stretched out next to the rifle, it too blending into the ground where all creatures eventually return. He hadn't wanted to gut it in the dark, so he had decided to camp during the deep part of the night and then, in the morning, clean the animal and carry it back to Fort Harrod where the people were in dire need of fresh meat. The wilderness fort had been under constant siege, forever at the mercy of native raiding parties. It had been four long days since anyone had ventured outside the skinny poles that formed the stockade—skinny poles that nonetheless meant the difference between life and death.

Samuel had come upon them yesterday, having returned to Kentucky and the Illinois country after traveling from Williamsburg with George Rogers Clark to drum up support and ammunition for the campaign. Theirs had been a mission of desperation, but Clark had his plans and the wherewithal to convince others that those plans were not only right and sound but
just short of God-breathed. After hearing him speak, Samuel had been convinced as well. Convinced and ready to follow a man like George Rogers Clark to hades and back, which might be required by the campaign outlined in his leader's red head. Samuel was one of the few who knew the full of Clark's bold plan to take the British forts of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. Success would mean much to the American cause, opening trade routes, the rivers, and the western frontier. What few others knew is that Clark also had his eye on Detroit, the well-fortified British stronghold of the Northwest. It was a bold plan all right. A plan to change history.

They were elated finally to receive permission from Patrick Henry to recruit a militia worthy of Clark's plan. Yet getting permission turned out to be the easy part. Clark and Samuel scoured the countryside, riding long hours on horseback through the backcountry of Virginia, talking to scores of farmers and tradesmen, stopping fathers and sons in open fields where the scent of tobacco reigned. They then traveled the cities and villages, from one smoke-filled tavern to another, then on to the docks and quays of the coastal towns. They soon discovered that recruiting men who were not already engaged in the Virginia militia was harder than finding seed in a chicken coop. It had taken them weeks to scrounge up even a few dozen men—and these were the most ragged, hard-bitten lot that even someone as toughened as Samuel had ever seen.

Finally, and though Clark had hated to, he'd sent Samuel back to the frontier to watch over the vulnerable forts. They had agreed to meet back up in May at the Falls of the Ohio River, just close enough to British-held Kaskaskia to spy and train. In the meantime Clark had commissioned Samuel to do just what he was doing: check on the forts, spread good news of support from Virginia, and keep his scalp attached.

It was a job Samuel had a knack for.

Upon reaching Fort Harrod, Samuel had found men with sunken cheeks, the women and children starving. The inhabitants were half frozen from lack of decent shelter and in a state of fearful paralysis, unable, mentally at least, to venture forth for fresh meat. He had been greeted by children with eyes as round as walnuts, women looking at him as though he was their savior, and men wounded or burying the latest dead. Samuel had immediately set out once more for provisions. They said it often enough: It was men like him who kept the territory open. Men like him who made it possible for brave souls to etch out a living on the frontier. And Samuel knew, deep in a place that stirred to life when on a mission of meat or war or peace even, that this was his place in the world. At least for now.

Now, with every fiber alert, he waited for the inevitable, anticipated it even. Suddenly, and with heart-stopping shrillness, a scream pierced the stillness of predawn. Samuel leapt up, rifle in hand, swung the massive buck unto his shoulders, and began to run. He was fast, had been fast since his boyhood days on a Virginia plantation where he raced and won against friends and foes, and that quickness had kept his scalp attached to his head for his twenty-four years. He knew, as sure as he knew his eyes were blue, that it would stand him in good stead now.

An arrow whizzed by his ear, and he turned, aimed, and fired. In the time it took him to turn back around, dodging trees and forest bramble, he had assessed the situation. Six warriors, two mounted and hot on his trail, one now dead, lying with a bullet lodged in his heart. Samuel had learned long ago the disadvantages of merely wounding an Indian, so now he left them little chance to plead vengeance oaths from their brothers. Not that his head wasn't held in high regard as it was. He knew of several chiefs who would give a daughter's hand in marriage
for a bloody swatch of Samuel's golden hair. The Glorious One, he had heard them call him.

Reloading as he ran, Samuel cut a jagged path through the dense undergrowth where hidden roots and bramble might cause the warriors to slow. He shifted the heavy weight of the deer, wondering if he would be forced to abandon it. No, the fort needed this meat; he had to make it with the provisions intact. Otherwise, this excursion would only be a footrace.

He turned to the left where the pounding of the ponies hoofs were beating heedlessly into his ears, like the drumming of a nightmare, but a nightmare so familiar it no longer held any terror, only a sure outcome. He took aim with instincts deeper than his sight and fired again. Moments later he heard a sound behind him. Unable to reload fast enough, he paused, grasped his tomahawk with a tight-fisted grip, and swung it around. The head of the tomahawk lodged in the throat of a man whose fierce eyes would be added to the others that haunted him. As he whirled back around, ready to sprint the last distance to the fort, Samuel marveled at the excitement in his blood.