Clay looked to the frying pan, still half full, and motioned them in. Jude gave a low whistle of appreciation while Maddie perused the unfamiliar blockhouse. Clay made introductions, the name Swan easily remembered.
“Miss Braam’s sleepin’,” Maddie told him quietly.
He took an extra plate and saved a portion for Keturah along with two corncakes. The tall stack hardly dwindled. Hester Swan left with a brisk farewell. Was she being compensated for her cooking? Another question to settle. But Keturah Braam was foremost on his mind.
“Appears Miss Braam’s kin left these parts after she was taken,” he said, “and I’ve yet to discover where to.”
Maddie’s face fell, but a famished Jude only looked up from his plate to reach for the salt cellar.
“Where does that leave her till you figure out what to do next?” Maddie asked.
Clay pondered his answer.
“She won’t tolerate the fort long, living free like she’s been,” Jude said as he chewed. “A fort is naught but a cage to an Indian.”
“And all those white eyes.” Maddie knew firsthand what it was like to be an outsider. Though free, she wasn’t always treated so and often chafed against a fort’s narrow confines herself.
“Once I put out the call to muster the militia tomorrow, I’ll take Miss Braam out to her old homeplace and start there.” Why he’d start there Clay couldn’t explain. It was bound to be emotional for her if any of her childhood memories remained or resurfaced, not to mention the absence of her white kin. “Care to come along?”
“I’ll join you,” Maddie answered without pause.
“Till the forenoon then.”
8
They rode out under a ten o’clock sun that promised to melt them by noon. Keturah Braam was abreast of him, Maddie behind. Clay sensed the Dutch captive’s relief to be beyond fort walls. It matched his own. Out here they escaped the rising stench of the fort’s privy pits and the manure-laden livestock pens, a potent combination in the May heat, and breathed deeply of the forest-cleansed air.
Now, in late spring, the lush woods were at full frolic before starting a slow slide toward autumn. It didn’t take long for Keturah to slip from her unsaddled mare and gather a palmful of early strawberries. She extended a hand, offering the first pickings to Clay, a smile on her berry-stained lips.
How could he refuse? He thanked her in both English and Lenape, popping the offering in his mouth. Next to marrow bones slow roasted around a campfire on a cold winter’s day, strawberries—summer’s best fruit—were his favorite food.
Maddie soon dismounted and joined Keturah while he stayed atop his horse, rifle resting in the crook of one arm, gradually getting his bearings in new territory.
Joseph Cutright had told him the whereabouts of the Braam cabin, but they were in no hurry to get there. He’d kept quiet about their destination, and now Keturah had turned it into a strawberry-picking expedition.
“Do you know the legend?” he asked her in Lenape.
She looked over at him, her hands busy with the berries. “How the Great Spirit made the first man and woman, and they quarreled? The woman ran away and the man could not catch her.”
Surprised by her wealth of words, Clay tamped down his desire to hurry. “To help him, the Great Spirit created a patch of strawberries, hoping to delay her. She stopped and ate this new fruit, and finally the man caught up to her and said he was sorry.”
Keturah nodded. “They called the fruit heart berry because it is shaped like a heart and reunited them forever.”
“Tehim,” he said, resurrecting the old word. “Strawberry.”
He studied her as she remounted her mare. Had she no angst about the day she was taken, picking berries as she’d been? Mayhap she’d forgotten that or refused it entry.
She looked at him, a curious light in her eye. “Someday you must tell me your own story. And why you speak the Lenape tongue so well.”
He said nothing to this, kneeing Bolt forward.
It took an hour of dense woods, two creeks, a thorny tangle of grapevine, and a bear sighting before they reached what looked to be the border of the Braams’ deserted homestead.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clay watched Keturah’s expression. Placid as a doe’s. At least till they got in sight of the cabin. In the noon glare, all the abandonment lay exposed. Every overturned cart, barrel, and rusted hinge. The sagging springhouse roof. A lightning-split hickory crushing a corncrib. All told that the Braams had been gone a long time.
Once again Keturah slid off her mare and began a slow walk to the well. She knelt there by the tumbled stones, eyes on the grass as if searching for something.
Maddie came abreast of Clay, her words more whisper. “Reckon we should follow?”
