Juliet back-paddled, flinging up a spray of frigid water over him and offsetting Two Eagles. “How is that for the sting of a bee?”
He sputtered from the icy water, and she glanced again over her shoulder. He smiled at her, his whole smile, wiping away every bit of seriousness, a blatant male smile, sensual, confident and devastating. Her breath caught, and for one heart-stopping moment, she couldn’t breathe. She’d never experienced such a force. She inhaled sharply, her insides quickening deep in her belly.
She swung around to face the front of the canoe, her body suddenly a white-hot, pulsating blaze rivaling the sun in intensity. Maybe it was the leftover exhilaration from the heat generated between them when he pressed his body behind her in teaching her how to paddle. Or maybe it was her mind playing cruel tricks on her. After everything she’d been through with the massacre, captivity, and the escape, her mind had turned to mush.
She ought to think of her future. Secretly, while an indentured servant, she’d endeavored to send her cousin, Colonel Faulkner, a letter through a trapper. The man wasn’t the most reliable, and she wondered if her cousin ever received her message. For now, getting to Fort Oswego and meeting up with her cousin was paramount. He’d return her to England with Mary, to civilization and sanity.
But what would her cousin say about her indenture? Would he give her the support she needed or turn his back on her like her uncle in England? Without resources, money or power, or family backing her, who was to say they might fall prey to someone like Baron Bearsted again?
Juliet quit paddling to give her aching arms a rest, allowing the current to move them forward, her thoughts grim with the uncertainties of her future. Was what she had gone through in England not more brutal than the honest savagery of this new world?
Chapter Fourteen
The squealing yips coyotes came from the hills. Two Eagles sat at attention. Joshua scanned the shore. His first thoughts were of Juliet and Mary’s safety. The smell of smoke and burnt flesh fouled the air.
“Strange, coyotes are only heard at night,” Juliet said. Joshua could see she was tenser than she wanted to reveal and with good reason. When she turned to look at him, he gave her a reassuring smile.
Two Indians in breechclouts and a white man emerged from a line of trees, waved at them. A kastoweh was bound round their foreheads, two eagle feathers up and one down.Oneida. Two Eagles lifted his paddle in greeting, and Joshua maneuvered the canoe to the shore. The Indians stepped into the water and pulled their bow up on the banks. A dugout to the left of them was packed.
Joshua and Two Eagles clasped the men’s hands. “Good to see you, Hadawako and Sheauga.”
The white-haired man, in filthy homespun hobbled toward them, his face, crinkled like parchment and his eyes, bloodshot from crying. “Damn those Tory troops and damn those Mohawks. They wiped out my family. My dear Bessie of twenty years. They took my grain, plundered my house, destroyed my furniture, killed my livestock. I was working over the mountain at my mill when Hadawako came to warn me. I saw the smoke and ran, but by the time I arrived everything was gone.”
He spat. “My beautiful Bessie, violated and scalped by those savages. My oldest son tried to defend the family but they pushed a lance through him, scalped him. No one deserves to die that way.”
Juliet gasped.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Joshua. “I wish there was something I could have done. What will you do now?”
“There’s nothing left for me here other than their graves. This was her favorite view of the river. Now she will have it eternally.” He pointed to the nine crosses on mounded patches of earth. “I’m traveling to Albany to live with my brother.”
Joshua slipped easily into the Oneida tongue, spoke rapidly to Hadawako and Sheauga. “You must warn the forts and settlers to the south. Captain Snapes and Colonel Butler are gathering for a big battle. What happened here,” he angled his head to the graves, “is a sample.”
Hadawako and Sheauga pivoted and melted into the forests.
Joshua exhaled. His message would get through and hopefully in time. “We must leave this place.”
The old man pushed his canoe into the river and vanished ahead of them.
Juliet had observed the back and forth exchange, of flying hand gestures, anger and determination. Whatever had been discussed, Joshua seemed pleased with the results.
She gazed at the forest that had swallowed up Hadawako and Sheauga. Then she asked, “What did you say to them that they left so quickly?”
He tensed for a second. “I sent a message.”
“To whom?”
“Get in the canoe.”
She sat purposely facing him.
He pushed them into the river, hopped in the stern, his answer too long in coming.
“It is insignificant.”
He held the paddle too tight like when he curled his hand around the fork at Hayes’ dinner party. “What did you them?”
He rearranged the gear and stretched out his long legs, sandwiching hers. “Winter might come early this year.”
