They hunkered down for a good quarter of an hour. She could see the fallen Indians, including the one she’d brained with the rock. Guilt licked at the edges of her conscience. Utterly spent, she wanted nothing more than to lay down atop the rough ground and sleep. Her throbbing hand beat along with her heart, giving her little rest.
As the sun flickered behind a bank of thunderclouds, new noises turned them on edge. Brush being trampled. Horses nickering and snorting.
When she saw Jude’s worried face appear, she nearly wept with joy. The search party soon framed him. Two of the men began rounding up the stolen horses while others stripped the fallen Indians of their weapons.
Famished, thirsty, she took the jerked meat and canteen Jude thrust at her without a word of thanks. Her only thought was for Clay. She in turn passed him the offerings, but he simply shook his head. She ate, taking tiny bites, as Clay descended the draw to where the wolfish warrior had fallen. Several Lenape had been killed. One had run.
But the one who’d pinned her to the ground . . . gone.
31
Jude gave a chuckle as they reached another nameless riverbank in the twilight. “So, you served the savages mush?”
“I thought it would go harder on us if I didn’t act hospitable,” Tessa confessed, cast back to that terrifying moment when she’d first heard tomahawks cleave the cabin logs.
“No doubt your scalp would be hanging from a belt if you’d done otherwise,” Westfall said. “After what we saw of Jasper . . .”
Clay shot him a look that bespoke much. A grievous silence ensued, the rush of the river not at all soothing. So, Jasper had indeed fallen, been buried by now near Pa, surely, facing east in readiness for resurrection morn like most settlement graves. How Ma was holding up beneath the loss of a husband and son—not one but two, counting Ross—was lost to Tessa too.
She fixed her gaze on Clay as she rode behind him and crossed the river, the cold water wetting what was left of her skirt and numbing the scratches on her skin. They were all a sorry, dirty lot, in need of a hot meal and a bath and a long night’s sleep.
She groped for gratefulness. She had but a few scrapes and sore fingers. Clay had survived that deadly tussle. Though her heart was torn to pieces about Jasper, she was more torn up about Ross, out there somewhere and unaccounted for. Now her fervent prayer was that the other party would return with him, intersect with them as they made their way back to the Buckhannon. But as night closed in, the men growing silent and forming a protective ring around her, she fell asleep to tormented dreams.
She was unaware she cried out till Clay loomed over her, the glint of his rifle in the pale moonlight a fearsome sight. He dropped to his knees at her shaking, the thin blanket around her no mask for her trembling. Letting go of his rifle, he reached out and drew her near, unmindful of the sleeping, snoring men surrounding them or the alert ones on watch.
“Tessa . . .”
She burrowed into him at the tender utterance, seeking strength. Solace. They’d not spoken privately since he’d found her. “How’s your head?”
“Still attached.” His wry words ended with a chuckle. “I’m more worried about my hat lost back in that draw.”
“Blast that hat. You saved my life, Clay. And I’ve no doubt you would have bested that Indian in the end. As it was, you took on all of them single-handedly.”
“I was most concerned about the tall one.”
“The buck who nearly scalped me by stepping on my hair as I lay there, then took your bullet and disappeared?”
He nodded, his sudden silence raising new qualms.
She rested her head against his shoulder. “Did you know him?”
Again that prolonged pause. It boded ill. She knew before he answered.
“Aye,” he said.
She waited, overcome by some unspoken regret, some grief weighting him that surely had to do with the wolf-marked warrior.
He drew her nearer. Lowering his head, he kissed her brow. “I never thought to see your hair unbound till we wed.”
She pushed back a wayward strand with her good hand, a twig tangled in its length. Pulling it free, she looked up at the moon. It resembled a scythe, bringing to mind Jasper at work in the fields, drinking the switchel she’d made him. And then her mind circled round to Ross when Clay said, “Tell me what happened at the cabin when the Indians came.”
She retold the terror of the day, focusing on Ross. “Later, on the trail, he fixed an Indian’s gun. I couldn’t believe my eyes but daren’t speak, lest it bring down their wrath on the both of us—”
“He’s no fool. Once they know he can mend their guns they’ll likely keep him alive. And he’s young yet. If he stays with the tribe, he’ll fare better than most. Mayhap grow fond of their ways—”
“Fond?” She couldn’t bear the thought. This chancy separation, this waiting and not knowing, was inconsolable. “You’ve got to bring him back, Clay. I thought—”
“You thought we were on the trail to find him? Nay, Tessa.” The firmness in his voice was like the closing of a door. “The other party we broke with at the river is charged with returning him if they can. My aim was to find you and bring you back.”
