Discreetly, Tessa watched Keturah. She’d seemed reluctant to eat, waiting till the men began, and had shunned her fork, preferring to partake with her fingers. How was she handling all this male talk? Any jabber about Indians and Indian sign was altogether missing, thankfully.
To Tessa’s surprise, at meal’s end Keturah began clearing the dishes from the table amid the men’s pipe smoke and sated belching. Tessa stayed still, though Ma rose to do the washing.
“So, Sister, going to set your bonnet for Colonel Tygart?” Cyrus teased with a wink.
“What bonnet?” Ross joked of her perpetually bare head.
“Shush,” she chided, pushing away from the table.
“Spied you two talking before he left. A mite bold to sashay up to him that way.” This from Zadock, who missed little. “Hope you remembered to call him Colonel.”
“Aye, that I did.” She felt pinned by their stares. “I merely asked him to send round Keturah’s things.”
“Is that right?” Lemuel drawled. “You seemed to be taking your sweet time doing it.”
They hooted when she crossed her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and ended the matter.
Across the cabin, Keturah’s yawn had Ma making plans for bedtime. Would their guest sleep in the trundle bed? With a wave of her hand, Ma shooed the men to their blockhouse quarters, the door betwixt them and the main cabin soundly shutting. They took it without complaint, for Ma was above any teasing, though Tessa sensed they wanted to linger.
Her private corner was hers no longer. Yet she didn’t rue the loss except to feel a slight qualm when she got on her knees to pray before she snuffed the bedside light. Keturah’s searching look sent her thoughts spinning every which way but heavenward. Had Keturah forgotten to pray, at least the white way? Indians kept their own religion, their practices deemed heathenish by most.
After a hasty amen, Tessa rose reluctantly to crawl between cool linen sheets while Keturah regarded with suspicion the trundle bed that had been moved to Tessa’s corner. Pulling the bedding free, Keturah wrapped it round her and lay down upon the wooden floor, her back to the shunned frame.
Tessa felt a qualm. Needs be she should stay on her knees all night. A great many matters needed praying for.
Father, bring the Braams back or Keturah to them. Let it be a gladsome reunion. Help me befriend her again till then. And if it pleases Thee, let her look kindly on one of my older brothers who so need a wife.
10
The strong, greasy aroma of roasting beef invaded every corner of Fort Tygart. After so much venison, Clay welcomed the change. He’d been at the fort a week, the days a blur of inspections and meetings and forays in and out of its walls. Not one whiff of trouble that he knew of along the border other than a few warriors bent on personal glory stealing horses. But instinct told him their every move was being watched. His coming here had not gone unnoticed. Little happened at military outposts that bypassed the tribes. Every inch of ground the settlers gained thrust the Indians back. That he felt caught in the crosshairs of the conflict mattered little.
“Colonel Tygart, sir.” At the blockhouse door stood an express rider. “Dispatch from Fort Pitt.”
Clay motioned him in even as he sealed his notice about Keturah Braam for the eastern newspapers. Jude had returned Keturah’s meager belongings to the Swan homestead a few days prior, saving him the trouble. He himself expected the Swan brothers for today’s muster and the frolic to follow.
“Best stay on for the festivities,” he told the weary courier. “Nothing urgent that needs sending to keep you from it.”
“Obliged.” Appreciation eased the man’s bedraggled features. “I smelt that beef long before I caught sight of them pickets.”
They left the dispatches atop his desk and emerged into a morning marred by distant thunderheads. “There’s to be horse racing and a turkey shoot just beyond the gates,” Clay told him. “And guards posted within and without.”
The courier removed his cocked hat and slapped it against his thigh to dispel the dust. “I’m wearied to the bone of watching my back.”
“Someday you won’t have to.”
Thunder boomed along with a drum, the signal to muster. While the courier took his rifle and joined the turkey shoot, Clay stood at the gate as a party of eight came through the line of trees to the south, the Swans and Keturah Braam on some of the finest mounts seen in these parts.
Maddie went out to meet them, Jude not far behind. Maddie seemed especially fond of Miss Swan. Pondering it, Clay moved on to the muster, pleased that nearly every eligible man in the settlement had turned out. There were the usual no-goods among them, the hotheads who resisted authority, even a few shirkers and sots. The Swans were among the better men. It was no surprise that a vote decided Jasper Swan as captain and a Schoolcraft as lieutenant. A roster for guard duty was begun and the most dauntless assigned as spies.
Their first drill played out and the regulations were read aloud, a great deal of commotion, questions, and dust clouding the day. Clay spent much time moving among the crowd as time unwound, committing each settler’s name and face in his thoughts, assessing their weapons and woodcraft and deciding who’d best serve where. Glad he was the summer twilight lasted late into the evening.
A fiddle twanged, followed by a shout signaling the dancing was about to begin. A bonfire glowed at the fort’s center, its snap and crackle building till light was cast into the farthest corners. Children flitted about like fireflies, the rare merriment like a contagion. He kept an eye on the guarded open gate, the other on the cavorting. ’Twould be a long, mosquito-laden night.
“Let me look at you.” Great-Aunt Hester turned Tessa this way and that behind the closed door of her cabin, just as she’d done since Tessa was no bigger than a minnow. With a forceful snap, Hester beheaded a stray string from Tessa’s new petticoat, then moved on to smooth the modesty piece about her bodice, anchoring it with an heirloom, a coral cameo from Scotland.
Beside her, Ruth sighed with delight, mayhap with a beat of envy. In her plain homespun, though she did wear a finely made cambric apron, she wore no jewelry, even borrowed. Tessa had lent her a dab of the toilette water from overmountain, which Ruth declared ornament enough.
“Now, go and choose well,” Hester admonished, shooing them out the door to the common just beyond. “A wedding would be a fine thing after so many buryings.”
